Autona / earth is Volvo Autonomous Solutions’ commercial AHS offering for mines and quarries, which combines the autonomous Volvo FH truck for mining with Volvo’s in-house developed virtual driver, infrastructure, operational support and maintenance needed to run autonomous transport. Delivered as Transport-as-a-Service, Autona / earth integrates autonomous technology into customer’s existing operations, with V.A.S. managing the technical complexity and regulatory compliance required for deployment.
The autonomous haulage system includes operation of autonomous vehicles driven by the Volvo Virtual Driver, fleet management and uptime as well as tailoring site infrastructure. Deep integration between the autonomy enabled truck, the Volvo Virtual Driver, and the Site Control system creates an integrated ecosystem for hauling material. The Virtual Driver ensures that the truck travels efficiently and safely through the demanding environment. The Site Control system provides real time fleet insights, status updates, and centralised oversight from the operations room, supporting predictable and efficient operations.
The new system builds on the initial experience and learnings at the Brønnøy Kalk limestone mining operation in Velfjord, Norway, where an autonomous Volvo FH truck fleet transports limestone on a five-kilometre stretch between the mine and the crusher and has been operating without a safety driver since 2023. The milestone of one million tonnes hauled autonomously was then announced in May 2025. All of the quarry production is today hauled autonomously over three shifts. The operation has nine fully autonomous FH trucks with trailers and it typically runs seven trucks each shift. As Autona / earth has been commercialised, production of the autonomous trucks has moved from Volvo’s Concept Vehicle Lab in Gothenburg to a dedicated production line in Säffle.
At the Volvo Days 2026 event recently in Eskilstuna, IM Editorial Director Paul Moore had the chance to catch up with Jonas Staaf, Operations manager Mining & Quarry at Volvo Autonomous Solutions and Viktor Karefjard, Systems Engineer at Volvo Autonomous Solutions – to talk about the system, its functionality and its future potential. Staaf said: “It’s using a lot of the same technology as is being used at Bronnoy Kalk, but Autona / earth is built from the ground up for mining. It is also future proofed, in terms of us being able to use it to drive multiple autonomous vehicles of different types, not just the Volvo FH.”
Karefjard adds: “It is also built with safety in mind from the beginning. So we have a secondary redundant high integrity safety system built into the vehicles based on multiple systems – in fact eight extra safety functions. Vehicle awareness is one of them, with continuous data steams to handshake positions of all the vehicles in operation. And then we also have zoning sections, where can restrict speeds to 10 km/h around areas where non-autonomous vehicles are positioned. These are just two examples. The safety functions are also layered with nominal systems like obstacle detection and meeting logic to further elevate safety.”
If this seems like overkill, for Volvo it’s making sure that it can fulfil all the regulatory compliance requirements. The focus is Europe initially, and it has some of the most stringent safety rules in the world – so whatever meets the bar in Europe is likely to be able to satisfy safety rules anywhere.
As stated, the focus is going forward to have Autona / earth as the principal Volvo autonomy system on any Volvo equipment, whether that’s ADTs, rigid trucks or the existing large Volvo FH heavy tipper trucks it is currently used on. Staaf: “All the vehicles in the group are potentially a target for Autona / earth, and we will add them one by one, in an order where it makes the most sense operationally and in terms of customer demand.” He added that Volvo has no plans currently to offer the system as an option for autonomous operation of non-Volvo haul units. Manually operated support machines eg loading and road maintenance, however, can be integrated regardless of brand.
From a tech point of view, Autona / earth uses a mix of cameras, IMU, LiDAR and radar. Karefjard: “We ticked all the boxes with a mix of sensors, and we use them together with sensor fusion where it makes sense. So, for example, LiDARs are really great for mining applications as we get high accuracy on ranging data which is very important for that environment. But it has low semantic information density. And that’s where cameras come in. Radar is great for challenging climatic conditions and as a support to the other sensors.” The Volvo FH truck has LiDAR and radar front and back, plus a number of cameras and an IMU. Currently Ouster LiDARs are used though the system could work with other supplier options if needed.
Similar to established AHS offerings, with Autona / earth the excavator or wheel loader operator brings the truck in, loads it and then kicks it out onto its autonomous route again. The autonomous truck calculates a path to the loading point indicated by the excavator or loader operator. To date there are no plans to automate excavators, though Volvo does have active teleoperation programs.
Where is Autona / earth being commercially used today? In addition to Bronnoy Kalk, Boliden recently used it on Volvo FH trucks for rock transport from an onsite quarry at Garpenberg to raise the height of the tailings dam wall. In total, close to 700,000 t of rock fill material were transported autonomously, and Volvo’s autonomous haulage system ran more than 11,000 transport cycles covering 56,000 km. The project has proven that Autona / earth is very productive in an active operational mining environment, which is actually quite complex.
Similar to established AHS offerings, with Autona / earth the excavator or wheel loader operator brings the truck in, loads it and then kicks it out onto its autonomous route again. The autonomous truck calculates a path to the loading point indicated by the excavator or loader operator. To date there are no plans to automate excavators, though Volvo does have advanced teleoperation programs ongoing.
At Bronnoy Kalk the trucks operate in quite a distinct AOZ – but for the latest Autona / earth system, mixed autonomous and non-autonomous traffic is possible, which was a big step forward. Staaf: “Mixed traffic capabilities are really needed today as a requirement for maximising operational efficiency. It depends to some extent how many shifts you run and what the shift setup is, but if you start to go towards 24/7 operations when there’s no production downtime to maintain roads and equipment, for example, you need to be able to have contractor and road maintenance vehicles integrated with the autonomous haulage trucks.”
Thanks for its multiple sensors especially smart cameras in conjunction with AI, Autona / earth also offers a degree of onboard intelligence where the trucks can recognise obstacles or other vehicles and already for some specific use cases are able to also calculate a new route around them.
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