Partnering for Progress: Creating a Shared Path for Autonomous Mining Innovation

By Scania Group

As autonomous solutions gain traction in mining, Scania supports OpenAutonomy.com — a collaborative initiative to enable interoperable, vendor-neutral autonomous mining solutions. We believe this openness is essential for the future of autonomous mining and for fostering innovation across the entire industry.

Why Mining Leads the Way

The mining sector has long been at the forefront of adopting autonomous technologies, driven by clear benefits in safety, sustainability, and productivity that come from deploying driverless vehicles in closed but challenging environments. While Scania continues to develop autonomous applications for other industries, mining remains where we have made significant progress.

Following a successful multi-year pilot with a major operator and the start of commercial deployments, we have seen growing interest in autonomous operations from customers worldwide. This momentum underscores the need for a truly open technology ecosystem.

The Case for an Open Technology Ecosystem

We recognise that interoperability must be built alongside robust safety cases and independent validation; contributions should include transparent safety artifacts and test evidence. For autonomous transport to deliver its full potential, solutions must integrate seamlessly with customers’ existing systems—such as fleet management platforms—without locking them into closed ecosystems. Open autonomy provides exactly that: a vendor-neutral framework that promotes interoperability and collaboration across the industry.

By avoiding proprietary lock-ins, we enable faster innovation, fair competition, and more sustainable outcomes. This approach ensures that customers can choose the best technologies for their operations while the industry collectively advances toward safer, more efficient, and lower-emission solutions.

Alignment with Scania’s Strategy

Scania's approach to autonomous transport recognizes that many customers already operate established systems and processes.

Rather than imposing a complete, closed solution, we aim to connect with what they have—an approach that aligns perfectly with open autonomy’s principles of openness and interoperability.

This strategy not only makes sense for customers but also supports our broader mission to drive the shift toward sustainable transport. By collaborating within an open ecosystem, we can reach more customers, reduce environmental impact, and accelerate the adoption of autonomous technologies across the mining industry.

Driving Industry-Wide Innovation

The open autonomy initiative is truly open by design, using GitHub for transparent, collaborative development that provides genuine access to the development process rather than simply adopting open language. This model encourages continuous improvement while maintaining rigorous peer review—ensuring progress benefits the entire industry, not just individual players. It’s a bold, forward-thinking approach that accelerates innovation and sets the stage for autonomous transport to become a mainstay in mining.

Looking Ahead

At Scania, we believe that openness and collaboration are key to unlocking the full potential of autonomous technology. We look forward to continuing our work with OpenAutonomy.com and partnering with other like-minded contributors to develop vendor-neutral, standard-based interoperability.

As part of this commitment, Scania intends to contribute integration examples, interface documentation and test cases to community repositories to help validate interoperability. Together, we can help make autonomous mining safer, more sustainable and more interoperable.