The distinction certainly matters. Plenty of systems on mine sites offer collision awareness, alerting an operator to a nearby person, vehicle or obstacle and leaving the response to them. Level 9, the highest tier in the mining industry’s framework for vehicle interaction controls, is a different proposition entirely. It means the system itself intervenes, braking or slowing the machine to prevent an incident when a hazard is detected and the operator has not responded. True collision avoidance, not just awareness.
For Torsa, passing the testing puts its Collision Management System in an exceptionally small group: Torsa is only the second company worldwide to successfully pass this validation process.
The testing was run in two distinct phases. Simulation testing checked the system’s compliance against strict international standards, where even a small deviation in response time counted against it. Field testing then put real vehicles through real scenarios, including parking manoeuvres among multiple surrounding vehicles, speed limiting within geofenced zones, restricted no-go areas, blind-corner and straight-line crossings, and right-of-way management at intersections.
Two challenges sat at the centre of the process. The first was proving the system could identify moving and static objects with the precision needed to raise alerts that are genuinely relevant, using a combination of sensor technologies including high-accuracy GPS. The second was tuning the braking intervention itself, calibrated to protect the operator while also protecting the vehicle’s mechanical components, so the system doesn’t add wear to suspension, brakes and tyres or unnecessary stress on the operator every time it steps in.
Six critical subsystems, covering the interface, system logging, self-diagnostics, detection, alerting and controller, were each independently assessed rather than judged as a single package.
The result is significant: Torsa is now the second company worldwide to clear this testing process. That places the system among a very limited group of collision management technologies to demonstrate this level of performance under independent assessment.
That’s what makes this a genuine engineering validation rather than a documentary exercise, and it’s a large part of why so few companies have cleared the bar.
Vehicle to vehicle interaction remains one of the leading risk factors on mine sites, and a system that intervenes reliably strengthens operational continuity as much as it does safety. Torsa’s work on the braking intervention specifically targets reduced wear on shock absorbers, brake pads and tyres, which flows through to fewer unplanned interruptions and lower maintenance costs alongside the reduction in incidents.
Torsa’s Collision Management System is already field proven, with the technology operating in live mining environments. The next stage in the University of Pretoria’s validation process is to validate the technology at TRL7 and TRL9 in live mining operations, extending the independent assessment into everyday operating conditions.
Aptella is Torsa’s distributor for Australia, New Zealand and Southeast Asia, supplying, deploying and supporting the technology locally for mining and quarrying operations.
