RobotRisk › Caterpillar › ~Aug 2023
Cat autonomous haul truck reverses into excavator at BHP's Goonyella mine
S2 · ~Aug 2023 · Caterpillar · Goonyella Riverside mine, QLD, Australia
Record
| Company | Caterpillar |
| Industry | Off-highway autonomy |
| Type(s) | crash |
| Date | ~Aug 2023 (month precision) |
| Time of day | not documented |
| Location | Goonyella Riverside mine, QLD, Australia |
| Severity | (minor injury or single-unit damage) |
| Scale | 1 autonomous truck, 1 excavator |
| Confidence | medium |
| Verified flag | Cited source on file; not independently re-verified |
Summary
A loss of communications on the autonomous haulage circuit at BHP Mitsubishi Alliance's Goonyella open-cut coal mine in Queensland caused a Caterpillar truck operating in autonomous mode to resume motion and reverse into a manually operated excavator once comms were restored, before the excavator operator could clear the boom. Damage was limited to the excavator's stick cylinder; the Queensland Mines Inspectorate found no worker injuries but flagged it as a likely world-first autonomous-truck-to-excavator collision and told the site to review post-outage start-up procedures.
Primary source
Publisher: Mining Monthly · Retrieved: 2026-09-16
Supporting source rows (1)
| Date | Supporting source row | Publisher | Link |
|---|---|---|---|
| ~Aug 2023 | Cat autonomous haul truck reverses into excavator at BHP's Goonyella mine | Mining Monthly | Mining Monthly |
Off-highway autonomy context
crash context
Caterpillar industry position
Related incidents
No related unique incidents are on file.
Other Caterpillar entries
- None on file.
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