World's first fully autonomous freight train goes for a spin in Australia

By Matthew Griffin Future Transport 10th October 2017

WHY THIS MATTERS IN BRIEF

While every transportation company on Earth is racing to build fully autonomous vehicle they’ve all been beaten to market by the world’s first fully autonomous freight train

This week Rio Tinto, who are already operating the world’s largest autonomous dump truck, the 250 ton electric Komatsu AHV, announced they’d achieved another first – a sixty mile test run of the world’s first fully autonomous freight train in the great Australian outback.

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The Australian mining company, who along with its biggest competitor BHP Billiton, have both been fully automating the world’s mines, as well as move their supply chains onto the blockchain, announced it’s been running trains in autonomous mode since the beginning of 2017, and that as of July around 20 percent of train runs were being completed autonomously.

The world’s first autonomous train

That said though they also stressed that up until the latest successful pilot, which had no human aboard at all, the trains had all had drivers on board as a failsafe.

“This successful pilot run puts us firmly on track to meet our goal of operating the world’s first fully autonomous heavy haul, long distance rail network,” said Rio Tinto chief executive Chris Salisbury.

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While there are already a few prototype autonomous train systems in existence, for example France’s SNCF train, and a few autonomous subways and airport shuttles, like the ones at London’s Heathrow, this is the world’s first fully functional autonomous freight train and the success puts Rio Tinto firmly on track to meet their goal of building a fully autonomous train network in 2018.

Trains, in many ways, make ideal autonomous vehicles because unlike trucks, ships and even aircraft their navigational requirements and the environments they operate in are much simpler, and that makes switching over to a driverless system much more feasible, and now that Rio Tinto has finished its first successful pilot you can expect more companies and industries to follow suit.

Matthew Griffin / About Author

Described by NASA as a "Walking Encyclopaedia of the Future" and one of the world’s most in demand keynote speakers Matthew Griffin, Founder and Futurist in Chief of the 311 Institute, a global Futures and Deep Futures advisory firm, is a multi-award winning Futurist and strategic foresight expert, author, lecturer, mentor, podcast and YouTube host.

With a distinguished career running global business units at Atos, EMC, and IBM today Matthew helps leaders and titans of industry from all over the world explore the impact of the inter sections of technology, culture, and leadership, then helps them create high performance organisations that can continuously disrupt, outpace, and outthink their competition.

15 times author of the hit series the Codex of the Future series Matthew's ability to identify, track, and explain the impacts of hundreds of emerging technologies and trends on global business, culture, and society has earned him a powerful reputation and a roster of clients that include royal households, world leaders across the G7, G20, and G77, and many of the world's most recognised and exceptional organisations including ABB, Accenture, ABN Amro, Adidas, AON, ARM, BCG, Centrica, Citi Group, Coca Cola, Deloitte, Dentons, Disney, Dow, EY, Google, KPMG, Lego, Microsoft, Legal & General, LinkedIn, Nokia, Paramount, PepsiCo, PWC, Qualcomm, RWE, Samsung, T-Mobile, UBS, Visa, WIRED, WPP and hundreds of others.

Matthew is regularly featured in the global media including the AP, BBC, Bloomberg, CNBC, Discovery, Forbes, Khaleej Times, Telegraph, TIME, ViacomCBS, WIRED, and the WSJ, and his mission is to help organisations create a fair and sustainable future whose benefits are shared by everyone irrespective of their ability, background, or circumstances.