TECH

Mining company will use 150 freestanding trucks

It may take years for car robots to hit the streets of the United States, but they are already finding space in Canada's oil fields.Suncor Energy plans to launch more than 150 freight freight trucks at its tar sands in northern Alberta over the next six years, a move it says will increase safety, improve efficiency and reduce costs.Canada's largest value-priced oil company has been studying Komatsu's autonomous trucks for four years and says the initiative will be one of the largest investments in electric robotic vehicles in the world. These trucks - huge machines that can carry tons of land every trip - will have a set of safety features, such as prescribed routes and obstacle detection systems, the company said.The decision underscores the efforts made by the oil sands companies, which are often among the highest-cost oil producers, to reduce expenses in an oil age at lower prices. In addition, companies have been experimenting with injecting solvents into reservoirs to extract more oil and using radio waves instead of steam to heat the reservoirs so the oil can flow to the surface."Suncor was the first company to transition from rotary excavator to truck and excavator operations in the early 1990s, and we remain at the forefront of tar sanding technologies today," said Markcorp's chief operating officer Mark Little, in a statement.



B. C.