Estimating Truck-Crusher Time of Arrival using a

Discrete Event Simulator

Marcos Fuentes, Francisca Gallardo and Ricardo Cerna
TiMining, Chile

ABSTRACT
One of the factors that impacts mining production requirements is the crushers feed rate. An ideal
scenario is to have regular truck arrival rates to crushers. However, arrival rates are subjected to
operational conditions, climatic conditions and unscheduled stoppage. Crushers may run out of
material if trucks take too long to arrive. On the other hand, if the crusher is not ready to process
material, trucks may have to wait, increasing cycle-times. Knowing the amount of trucks en route
and their estimated time of arrival (ETA) would help the operator to improve the crusher
management.
This paper describes a method to calculate truck-crusher ETA using a software tool developed for
this purpose. It includes an event-based simulator, a simulation model editor and a viewer to
display truck positions. The truck location data to assist the model creation and validation was
taken from Los Pelambres mine dispatch database. By using the scenario model editor, users can
enter topology, crushers, dumps, truck fleets, shovels and mining plan requirements. Other model
parameters such speed profiles, routes and truck-route assignment are automatically generated.
After model parameters and truck position data are loaded in the tool, the process of calculating
ETA is done automatically. The viewer component displays and animates truck positions. When a
truck is approaching to a crusher at a given distance, a simulation is triggered using the current
mine status as initial simulation parameters. Simulation results are read and the simulated truck
arrival time to crusher is saved as ETA. Accuracy is measured by comparing the simulated ETA
and the actual time of arrival.
The software was able to predict arrival times with a percentage relative error less than 20% for 70%
of the cases when the distance truck-crusher is 1.5 km. This solution can also be used to estimate the
ETA to any other entity. Nevertheless, it does not model unplanned situations other than
interferences between trucks.

1
INTRODUCTION
An important part of the costs of mining production is associated with energy consumption, where
about 70 % of the expenditure corresponds to crushing and milling processes. Idle time windows
are often found during daily operation, which means that the primary crusher is working empty,
due to interference in truck traffic, rerouting, unscheduled stoppages or poor dexterity of the
dispatcher. This results in unnecessary energy consumption, which could be reduced if these time
windows are known. If truck arrival times are predicted in advance then crusher management
could be improved.
An approximate solution method based on dynamic programming to estimate the truck arrival
time at each customer location was proposed by Jula et al. (2006), by trying to solve the stochastic
traveling salesman problem with time windows (STSPTW). The objective was developing methods
for routing and scheduling trucks in uncertain environments at the lowest cost. One of the major
difficulties in estimating the arrival time at each node was the existence of the nonlinearity formed
by time windows.
Jaoua et al. (2009) developed a new simulator called Surface Mining Transportation Simulator:
SuMiTSim as a laboratory for mine transportation network design and analysis. This microscopic
simulator, unlike a macroscopic approach, allows a high level detail modeling (single-vehicle level),
which describes the dynamics of the elements, such as the trucks, the road and their interaction in
the traffic network.
In Chanda & Gardiner (2010), three methods for predicting the truck cycle times in open pit mines
were compared: computer simulation, neural networks (NNs) and multiple regressions (MRs). The
study found that in the case of a large open pit gold mine in Western Australia, computer
simulation using the software TALPAC underestimated and overestimated the results for short and
long hauls respectively, while both NNs and model regressions were superior in their predictive
abilities.
Ahangaran et al. (2012) developed a real-time truck-dispatching model. The algorithm consists of
two stages, the first based on Network Flow Theory to find the best route between the departure
point and destination point of all possible transportation routes between nodes. The second stage is
the allocation of trucks using Binary Integer Programming, where all equipment and operational
constraints are considered.
Mena et al. (2013) developed a simulation and optimization framework for allocating the number
and distribution of trucks on the transport routes in an open pit mine. This tool is able to account
for the reliability, availability and maintainability (RAM) characteristics of the equipment. The
optimization model determines the optimal allocation of trucks on the transport routes, given the
equipment and routes available. The simulation model assumes that trucks, shovels and loaders fail
at random times.
This document presents an alternative to manage the operation times of the primary crusher in
open pit mines, by estimating the time of arrival of trucks (ETA). The tool used for this purpose was

2
Orchestra, software developed by the authors. This software includes an event-based simulator, a
scenario model builder, a raw location data viewer, a scenario model editor and a scenario viewer.
The event-based simulator requires a scenario model in order to work, which can be built using
existing information about the truck locations in the mine.
The objectives of the work are threefold: i) Calculate crusher-truck ETA times using an event-based
simulator, ii) Compare different prediction methods for ETA against actual time of arrival (ATA),
and iii) Measure the error between ETA and ATA.

METHODOLOGY

The steps to build the scenario model are shown in Figure 1a below and are described in the
following sections.
Input Data

Raw Location Scenario

Orchestra
Data M odel
M odel
(Incomplete,
Editor
Only topology)

M ap M atching
Input Reconstruction

Path Building

Path M atching

Speed Profil
e B uilding

Reconstructed Input Data +

Scenario M odel (Complete)

Figure 1 a) Left: Scenario building steps. b) Top right: Raw data file locations during October 30-31, 2015. c)
Bottom right: Topology entities in the scenario model.

Scenario model building stage

Input Data

The raw location data is a file that contains the location and time captured by the GPS devices
installed on trucks. In this study, the sample data was extracted from the Dispatch database
(Modular, 2016) of Los Pelambres mine, located near Los Vilos, Chile. The frequency of data
collection was 30 minutes and the date ranges from October 30, 2015 9:00 AM to October 31, 2015
9:00 AM. The file contains timestamp, truck name and position, which are plotted in Figure 1b. It is
possible to appreciate that in some areas the trails left by the trucks are thicker than others,
indicating more error in GPS measurement.

3
Scenario Model
The scenario model contains several entities that model the mine. By processing the raw data, some
entities can be created automatically, manually or in an assisted fashion.
Entities of the simulation model are the following:
1. Topology Entities: road sections, intersections, parking lots, loading and unloading points.
Created in the scenario model editor with the assistance of the truck trails (figure 1b, 1c)
2. Vehicle Entities: trucks, shovels, dumps and crushers.
3. Routes: sequence of topology elements. i.e.: {loadingPoint1, section1, section2, … , section10,
unloadingPoint1}.
4. Initial truck position en route: i.e.: 3.71 meters from the beginning of 𝑠𝑒𝑐𝑡𝑖𝑜𝑛1 . This value
differs from the GPS location because it is relative to a section and not to Earth.
5. Trucks status: Whether the truck is loaded or unloaded.
6. Speed profiles: Average speed of trucks in a segment of a section. The simulator uses this
value to move the trucks. It is built automatically from the raw data.

Map Matching
The next steps in the process require a scenario model containing only the topology and vehicle
entities, which are created by the user. In order to build the remaining entities it is necessary to
analyze the truck position sequences. However, GPS location data is subject to measurement errors
that difficult the analysis and can lead to misinterpretations. In some zones the error can be around
30 meters, due to environmental conditions, such as visibility of satellites (i.e.: When a truck is too
deep in the pit).
For example, in figure 2, the sequence of raw data positions (p0, p1, p2, p3) is shown as red dots. By
using the MapMatching method Wei et al. (2012), a sequence of raw data positions can be assigned
to the most likely position en route c0, c1, c2, c3 (orange dots). Without using this method, the position
p0 can be assigned mistakenly to Section A.

Sec Crush
tion
A er pro
ximit
y zo
ne
p0
Section B p2
p4 c5
c1
Rou
te
c0 p5
c3
p1 c4 Unloading Point +
Crusher
Loading Point +
Shovel

Figure 2 a) Left: MapMatching b) Right: Visualization tool

4
Route Building, Route Matching and Speed Profile Building
Later, every truck sequence is analyzed by a route building algorithm in order to create the routes.
It detects every sequence that starts and ends between loadings points and unloading points. A
route can be seen as a sequence of blue dots in figure 2a.
After routes are created, it is necessary to assign every truck position to a route. Sequences of truck
positions are checked if they fit to the routes built in the previous step. Thus, the route that matches
better to the sequence is selected.
As a final step, every road is divided into small segments of 30 meters. Every time a truck passes by
a segment, the speed is measured and the average is calculated. It takes into account whether the
truck is loaded or not.

Data Analysis and Prediction Stage

After the previous step, the scenario model is reconstructed as well as every truck position at a
given time. Using the visualization module of the software (figure 2b), it is possible to animate the
scenario at any given time.

t0 t1 t2 t3 t4
vcurrent
Actual timeline i0
c0 c2 … c4 s0 ,i0
c1
c0
c4 sn
c1 c2
Simulation timeline s0 s1 s2 … sn
deuclidean
t0 te ta ts denroute

Figure 3 ETA prediction and Validation

Additionally, the visualization tool handles the interpolation between every pair of positions. For
example in figure 3, positions (c1, c2) are associated to timestamps (t1, t2). The visualization tool
interpolates positions between (c1, c2) for any t1 ≤ t ≤ t2 by using the topology sections. One of these
positions is i0.

Event-based simulator
Under well-defined initial conditions (initial position of every truck, routes, speed profiles, loading time,
unloading time), the simulation can be calculated from discrete events. An event is triggered if any
truck in the system changes its status, where a status change occur when a truck leaves one entity to
enter another, a truck has finished unloading, a truck finished loading or a truck stops.
As sections can be very long, they are divided into smaller subsections so when a truck passes from
one subsection to the next an event is also triggered. Once an event occurs, positions and statuses of
every other truck are updated too.
The result obtained is a list ordered by time with location, position and status of every truck, where
each time corresponds to a simulated event.

5
Triggering ETA calculations

The process of triggering ETA using the event-based simulator work as follows (See figure 3):

 Visualization animates the mine scenario at a given time t. When the distance between
the truck position in and the center of the crusher is less than a radius r, a simulation is
triggered. The current timestamp is saved as te.
 The simulation is executed with a maximum duration of 2 hours. The trucks move at
increments of 10m based on speed profiles (simulated positions si.).
 When the truck reaches the crusher in the simulation timeline (position s4), the timestamp
ts is obtained and the ETA is calculated: 𝐸𝑇𝐴𝑠𝑖𝑚𝑢𝑙𝑎𝑡𝑖𝑜𝑛 = 𝑡𝑠 − 𝑡𝑒
 Meanwhile, the visualization continues in the actual timeline until the truck reaches the
crusher at time ta. The actual arrival time is calculated: 𝐴𝑇𝐴 = 𝑡𝑎 − 𝑡𝑒 .
 The error between ETA and ATA is measured.

The ETA is additionally calculated using other methods:

 Using only speed profiles, not including truck interference:
|𝑠𝑖+1 −𝑠𝑖 |𝑒𝑛𝑟𝑜𝑢𝑡𝑒
𝐸𝑇𝐴𝑝𝑟𝑜𝑓𝑖𝑙𝑒𝑠 = ∑𝑛𝑖=0 𝑝𝑟𝑜𝑓𝑖𝑙𝑒(𝑠𝑖 )
(1)

 Direct method, without simulator, using truck speed at s0 and Euclidian distance:
|𝑠𝑖+1 −𝑠𝑖 |𝑒𝑢𝑐𝑙𝑖𝑑𝑖𝑎𝑛
𝐸𝑇𝐴𝑒𝑢𝑐𝑙𝑖𝑑𝑖𝑎𝑛 = ⃗ 𝑐𝑢𝑟𝑟𝑒𝑛𝑡
𝑣
(2)

 Direct method, without simulator, using truck speed at s0 and route distance:
|𝑠𝑖+1 −𝑠𝑖 |𝑒𝑛𝑟𝑜𝑢𝑡𝑒
𝐸𝑇𝐴𝑒𝑛𝑟𝑜𝑢𝑡𝑒 = ⃗ 𝑐𝑢𝑟𝑟𝑒𝑛𝑡
𝑣
(3)

RESULTS AND DISCUSSION

The results of the different prediction methods can be seen in figure 4. The time of arrivals were
estimated for distances 300 to 1,500 [meters] from the crusher. The method that performs worst is
ETAeuclidean, mostly because it underestimates the distance to crusher. ETAenroute assumes a constant
speed, which reduces the precision. ETAsimulation and ETAprofile have the closest values to ATA, being
ETAsimulation the best. However, ETAsimulation has a smaller standard deviation than ATA; this is mainly
because the event-based simulator does not model non-deterministic situations that can impact the
time of arrival, such as: unscheduled stoppages, loss of GPS signal, route changes and other human
factors.

6
 Average ETA - ATA Standard deviation ETA - ATA
6 3

5 2.5
Arrival time (minutes)

Arrival time (minutes)

4 2
ETA Profil
e ETA Profil
e

3 ETA Simulation ETA Simulation

1.5
ETA Euclidian ETA Euclidian

ETA EnRoute ETA EnRoute

2 1
ATA ATA

1 0.5

0 0
300 400 500 600 700 800 900 1000 1100 1200 1300 1400 1500 300 400 500 600 700 800 900 1000 1100 1200 1300 1400 1500
Distance (meters) Distance (meters)

Figure 4 Average and standard deviation of time of arrival using different methods and distances

In figure 5 the cumulative distribution of percentage relative error (PRE) for each method is shown,
which is calculated as:
|𝐸𝑇𝐴−𝐴𝑇𝐴|
𝑃𝑅𝐸 = ∗ 100 (4)
𝐴𝑇𝐴

The ETAsimulation and ETAprofile have an error < 25 % for 75 % of the cases for distances greater than
600 meters. The other two methods perform better for distances lower than 600 meters, because it is
more likely that the speed remains constant near the crusher.
ETA using simulation ETA using speed profiles method
100% 100%

90% 90%

80% 80%

70% 70%
Distribution

300
Distribution

60% 60% 300

50% 600 50% 600

900 900
40% 40%
1200 1200
30% 30%
1500 1500
20% 20%

10% 10%

0% 0%
0% 10% 20% 30% 40% 50% 60% 70% 80% 90% 100% 0% 10% 20% 30% 40% 50% 60% 70% 80% 90% 100%
Error percentage Error percentage

ETA using euclidian distance ETA using routes distance

100% 100%

90% 90%

80% 80%

70% 70%

300
Distribution

60%
Distribution

60% 300

50% 600 600

50%
900 900
40% 40%
1200 1200
30% 30%
1500 1500
20% 20%

10% 10%

0% 0%
0% 10% 20% 30% 40% 50% 60% 70% 80% 90% 100% 0% 10% 20% 30% 40% 50% 60% 70% 80% 90% 100%
Error percentage Error percentage

Figure 5 Cumulative distributions of errors using different prediction methods

In figure 6 the crusher idle times are shown. Most of the idle times for the crusher are very short.
There are two big windows of 36 and 41 minutes during midnight, when turning off the crusher
would be beneficial. For the rest of the day there is no potential improvement, since a crusher in Los
Pelambres takes around 8 minutes to turn on.

7
 Figure 6 Crusher idle times during the day

CONCLUSION

The solution proposed in this paper can calculate ETA with PRE < 20% for 70% of the cases when
the trucks are at 1.5 Km from the crusher. One of the advantages is that the simulation model is
built almost automatically with little human assistance from simple location data.
This solution cannot only be used to estimate the ETA to crushers but to any other entity.
Nevertheless, it does not model unplanned situations other than interferences between trucks. It is
expected that the results can be improved if this noise can be modeled. Additionally, since the mine
topology changes dynamically, the topology entities could be automatically built in a future using
the truck trails.
On the other hand, analyzing historical crusher idle times and their ETA can be useful to audit the
performance of existing dispatch technologies and the dispatcher.
In a future this solution can be adapted to work in an online streaming of location data, allowing
predicting ETA on real time.

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

The authors want to thank to Los Pelambres mine for providing the GPS truck location dataset used
in this work.

REFERENCES

Ahangaran, D. K., Yasrebi, A. B., Wetherelt, A., Foster, P. (2012) ‘Real-time dispatching modeling
for trucks with different capacities in open pit mines’, Archives of Mining Sciences, Vol. 57, Iss: 1,
Pages 39 - 52.
Chanda, E.K., Gardiner, S. (2010) ‘A comparative study of truck cycle times prediction methods in
open-pit mining’, Engineering, Construction and Architectural Management, Vol. 17, Iss: 5, Pages 446 -
460.

8
Jaoua, A., Riopel, D., Gamache, M. (2009) ‘A framework for realistic microscopic modelling of
surface mining transportation systems’, International Journal of Mining, Reclamation and Environment,
Vol. 23, Iss: 1, Pages 51 - 75.
Jula, H., Dessouky, M., Ionnou, P.A. (2006) ‘Truck Route in Non-stationary Stochastic Networks
With Time Windows at Customer Locations’, IEEE Transactions on Intelligent Transportation Systems,
Vol. 7, Iss: 1, Pages 51 - 62.
Mena, R., Zio, E., Kristjanpoller, F., Arata, A. (2013) ‘Availability-based simulation and optimization
modeling framework for open-pit mine truck allocation under dynamic constraints’, International
Journal of Mining Science and Technology, Vol. 23, Iss: 1, Pages 113 - 119.
Modular (2016). DISPATCH Fleet Management, Accessed 06-16-2016,
http://www.modularmining.com/product/dispatch/.
Wei, H., Wang, Y., Foreman, G., Zhu, Y., Guan, H. (2012) ‘Fast Viterbi Map Matching with Tunable
Weight Functions’, ACM SIGSPATIAL GIS ’12, Nov. 6-9, 2012. Redondo Beach, CA, USA, ACM, New
York, NY, USA, Pages 613-616