ECA Group develops with Rio Tinto industrial delivery robots within the European project Echord++

This 18 months long European project managed by ECHORD, started in September 2016, was carried out by the consortium of RIO TINTO ALUMINIUM and ECA Group.

The experiment is part of the "smelter of the future" framework, aiming to integrate fully autonomous unmanned vehicles in an industrial process.

The integration of autonomous vehicles in a factory raises some very challenging issues such as the robustness of the navigation for indoor and outdoor operations and the safety of goods and people.

The experiment will demonstrate the feasibility of implementing an autonomous form of logistic in an existing plant, without guiding infrastructures and while keeping the existing road network.

In addition, the consortium will test and validate the navigation software in a smelter (aluminium production plant) and will have to demonstrate the main following use cases:

• Delivery of the loads in different shops including interfaces with existing equipment
• Accurate docking of the loads to pick up them in an autonomous way
• Cross road and vehicles priorities management
• Entrances and exits of the buildings