Epiroc Autonomous SmartROC D65 MKII Fleet Expands Globally

Epiroc's autonomous SmartROC D65 MKII surface drill is moving from showcase deployments into everyday production, with the Swedish equipment maker reporting that its global autonomous fleet continues to grow across mining and quarrying customers in Australia and the United States.

Named reference sites now include Fortescue's Solomon and Eliwana iron ore operations in Western Australia, Luck Stone's Rockville quarry in the US, and KGHM's Robinson Mine in Nevada. The MKII is built to execute drill plans with minimal human intervention, automating the full drill cycle while crews supervise remotely from outside active work areas. It integrates with LinkOA, Epiroc's platform for managing drill plans, coordinating autonomous operations and monitoring fleet activity in real time, and operators can supervise both autonomous SmartROC and Pit Viper rigs through the company's Common Automation Panel. Product manager Mayya Popova said growing adoption reflects the value customers are seeing from autonomous drilling, while automation manager Christopher Blignaut pointed to the shared technology base across drill platforms as a consistent foundation for managing and expanding autonomous fleets.

For procurement teams evaluating drilling contractors and equipment packages, Epiroc's reference list is a useful marker of how quickly autonomous surface drilling has moved into mainstream production environments. The practical takeaway is that fleet-level automation is now a procurement question, not a trial question. Buyers should weigh three things when quoting autonomous rigs against conventional units. First, commonality: a shared interface such as Epiroc's CAP across SmartROC and Pit Viper platforms reduces training, spare-parts and supervision overhead, and LinkOA's ability to also manage autonomous haul trucks means one coordination layer can stretch across the drill-and-haul cycle. Second, delivery and support: autonomy converts a rig purchase into a service relationship, so vendor response times, remote-monitoring coverage and software update terms deserve as much negotiation weight as the machine price itself. Third, productivity evidence: references at operations like Solomon, Eliwana, Rockville and Robinson give buyers concrete sites to study for utilization and consistency data before committing. Suppliers of consumables, dust suppression and haul-road equipment should also take note — autonomous rigs running longer, more uniform cycles change wear patterns and maintenance windows, which shifts demand toward predictable, contract-based supply. For buyers who waited out earlier generations of automation, the expanding installed base now provides enough field history to write defensible business cases.