Rio Tinto's boss of ports and rail Ivan Vella says the increasing bank of data the industry is generating is the greatest untapped "enabler and disrupter" available to the sector as he reveals expanding artifical intelligence across the global miner's business. Mr Vella, managing director of port, rail and core services at Rio Tinto, told the Resources Technology Showcase today that as the miner had moved to remote operations and asset automation it had generated a huge amount of data across its business. "Today, we track everything, our team is swimming in an ocean of data, which will be crucial to ensuring the efficiency and ongoing health of autonomous assets and systems," he said. "Without a doubt, it is the greatest untapped enabler and disrupter available to our industry." Mr Vella highlighted in his speech, 'Project Tempo', which Rio developed with EY data and analytics, Monash University and Strukton Rail.

A decade in the making, Rio Tinto's driverless train system, called AutoHaul, now manages roughly 200 locomotives that move iron ore from inland mines to coastal ports in Western Australia. The trains are operated hundreds of miles away, in an office block in Perth. Rio Tinto's network, which began formally operating in driverless mode late last month, is the first fully autonomous, long-haul freight railroad. Rail-company executives from countries including the U.S. and Canada have visited to see the technology in action, said Ivan Vella, Rio Tinto's head of iron-ore rail services. American companies say automating tasks once handled by crew will create fluid networks more akin to a model train set.

The world's largest robot has been unveiled and it is a completely autonomous railway system. AutoHaul has been developed by a mining firm and is being used to transport iron ore from mines to shipping ports 500 miles away (800 km) in Western Australia. This journey can be completed in just 40 hours, including the loading and dumping of the ferrous cargo. Its deployment is the end result of a project which has so far cost $940 million (£740 million). Rio Tinto, the corporation that built the infrastructure and hardware for the locomotive, says this could be the first step in transforming the firm's 1,000-mile (1,700-kilometre) network connecting 16 iron ore mines and two ports.