As autonomous haulage systems (AHS) redefine open-pit mining, arguably a critical gap remains – the physical interface between digital intelligence and hydraulics during the tipping cycle. While AHS providers build the ‘brains’ for the modern software-defined vehicle (SDV) era, Hyva provides the digital ‘muscle’ for autonomous tipper body control.
The power of this approach was recently proven within the Yimin open-pit coal mine near Hulunbuir, Inner Mongolia, China. Operating in extreme temperatures, including down to -36°C in winter, Hyva co-created the ‘DTS Tip by Wire’ solution with XCMG for the world’s first fleet of 100 zero-carbon, cabless ZNK95 autonomous battery electric haul trucks which is also currently scaling to a larger fleet size.
The fleet was the result of a partnership between truck OEM XCMG along with network provider Huawei, and State Grid Smart Internet of Vehicles Co Ltd on the joint innovation project which uses a Huawei 5G-Advanced (5G-A) network and XCMG supplied battery swapping stations together with plug in charging. The network features 500 Mbps uplink and 20 ms latency.
Huawei Cloud provides the Commercial Vehicle Autonomous Driving Cloud Service (CVADCS) that uses a crowdsourced map for real-time operational location updates. This enables fast route optimisation, reduces waiting times, and improves operational efficiency, maximising the strengths of collaborative truck fleet operations.
Malik Chitour, Head of Digital Business Development at Hyva, which is part of JOST, a leading global producer and supplier of safety-critical systems for commercial vehicles, told IM: “Leveraging 47 years of hydraulics market global leadership, our Digital Tipping Solutions (DTS) architecture adds actionable value to AHS providers and OEMs through four core software-driven capabilities.”
The first of these is chassis & asset protection, as DTS TBW automatically optimises tipper body lowering speeds based on sticky load (carry-back) detection, preventing body/chassis abuse. Second, payload optimisation – the stack provides per-trip payload monitoring, delivering asset and fleet-level cloud benchmarks to optimise shift performance.
Third, compliant remote service. Built-in remote diagnostics and regulatory-compliant Over-the-Air (OTA) software feature updates maximise operational uptime. Finally, local data integration capability – tipping data can be integrated locally with native on-board truck software, allowing AHS providers to bundle our data into their proprietary OEM stack.
Chitour adds: “We are actively moving toward software-defined tipping. Fuelled by millions of collected tipping data points, our future architecture integrates agentic AI, machine learning, and high-fidelity digital twins to enable a more customer centric product customisation, faster testing, and virtual deployment of next-generation features. Coupled with our established global sales and aftersales network, we offer to regional AHS players a ready-made platform to rapidly expand their geographic footprint through our combined JOST and Hyva network.”