Underground Autonomy Reaches the Last Human-Exposed Intervention Point

By the OpenAutonomy.com Editorial Team

Normet Xrock just launched what they're calling the world's first fully autonomous rock-breaking system. The Autobreaker handles everything — identifying oversized rock at crusher grizzlies, targeting it, breaking it down — with no operator at the hazard zone.

Operators supervise remotely now. One person in a control room can oversee multiple breaker installations across different areas of the mine. The system relies on camera vision and sensors to assess conditions and make decisions in real time.

Mika Hyysti, Normet's Head of R&D, didn't mince words about what this means: "Rock-breaking has long been one of the last unavoidable human-exposed interventions in mining. Normet Xrock has now removed it."

A Different Kind of Problem

Here's why this matters beyond the autonomy itself. Mining's been automating surface haulage for over a decade now, but rock-breaking is fundamentally different.

Think about what autonomous haul trucks do. They follow prepared roads, navigate predictable traffic patterns, execute the same cycles again and again. The technical challenges were real — navigation, collision avoidance, fleet coordination — but mostly within a structured rule‑set.

Rock-breaking? Not even close to the same problem.

Material piles up differently at every grizzly. Boulder size varies. Position varies. How the material has stacked - that varies too. The system needs to look at what's in front of it, figure out where and how to strike for effective breaking, and adjust if the first approach doesn't work. It's less about following protocols and more about actually interpreting what you're seeing and responding to it.

Normet built this on their existing platform, which moved from remote operation to full autonomy over several years. They also integrated their quick coupler system, so a single boom can automatically switch between breakers, grapples, and magnets depending on what the conditions require.

The Question Mining Hasn't Answered Yet

Surface mining spent years sorting out integration questions, and it’s still ongoing. When autonomous haul trucks started deploying at scale, mines had to make decisions. Fleet management integration. Traffic coordination protocols. Whether they needed to commit to single-vendor systems or could mix solutions from different providers.

Those debates weren't academic. They shaped procurement decisions, affected operational flexibility, influenced how quickly operations could adopt new technologies. Some mines went with integrated single-vendor approaches. Others pushed for interoperable solutions that let them pick different providers for different system layers.

Underground operations haven't had this conversation yet. Not really. Autonomous systems for most underground tasks are just reaching commercial viability now.

But as more processes automate — loading, rock-breaking, drilling, materials handling — the same questions are going to apply. Does an autonomous rock breaker need to communicate with the system managing material flow through the crusher? Should autonomous loaders coordinate with rock breaking systems? Can a mine select what it considers the best solution for each task, or does effective integration require staying within one vendor's ecosystem?

The surface experience suggests that answering these questions after you've already deployed multiple proprietary systems is harder than planning for integration early. It's also true that creating interoperability standards is easier to talk about than to actually implement, especially when different underground applications have such different technical requirements.

What Comes Next

The Autobreaker launch demonstrates something important: autonomous systems can now handle underground tasks that require real-time perception and adaptive responses to unpredictable conditions. That opens up possibilities for autonomy in other underground applications that were previously considered too variable.

How those applications develop — as integrated ecosystems or as interoperable, modular solutions — will shape how underground autonomy evolves. The technology exists for either approach.

What determines the outcome? Vendor strategy. Customer requirements. And whether the industry develops integration standards proactively or has to work through them reactively after the fact.

Surface mining learned these lessons while building autonomous haulage. Whether underground operations apply that experience or work through it all over again — that's still an open question.