World's Largest Robot Hauls Ore Through Western Australia

It's often the case that the more useful a robot is, the less exciting it is. The robots that do the hardest jobs tend to be straightforward solutions to straightforward problems, because that's what works. The (self-declared) world's largest robot is an efficient, grubby example of this--it's an autonomous train that recently hauled 28,000 metric tons of iron ore 280 kilometers across the Australian desert. Australia is a big place, and it takes a lot of effort to get material out of the middle of Australia (where it's not useful) to the coast (where it can be taken somewhere that it is). Trains are the most efficient way of doing this, and they travel back and forth through a whole lot of nothing, taking ore from mine to port and bringing the empty cars back again.