Detailed in a statement in September 2025, a strategic technology collaboration between vehicle intelligence company Applied Intuition and heavy equipment manufacturer Komatsu is planning to co-develop a unified software-defined vehicle (SDV) and autonomy platform that will serve as the central brain of Komatsu’s next generation of mining equipment, including for mining trucks.

This collaboration aims to provide modern technologies and real-time adaptability to Komatsu’s next generation of mining equipment, helping customers boost productivity, reduce downtime and operate with greater precision and efficiency.

The enhanced architecture aims to enable faster deployment, simplified support and scalable solutions that extend across mine sizes and geographies.

In refining the platform, Applied Intuition will leverage its proven capabilities across vehicle operating systems, autonomy stacks and tooling, while Komatsu will harness its extensive expertise in off-highway truck autonomy and mining equipment applications.

The jointly developed platform will introduce new machine intelligence through key features such as SDV architecture that will enable continuous feature delivery over the life of the machine, with native integration of data management, digital security and connected support.

It will also provide flexible autonomy capabilities ranging from advanced operator assistance to full autonomy on a common platform, adaptable across fleets, commodities and operational complexities.

In addition, the platform will also embed machine learning and AI that supports functional enhancements and continuous learning, enabling site-specific optimisation of trucks as conditions change.

Komatsu expects that with the SDV and autonomy platform, mining customers will benefit from improved equipment performance, reduced downtime and increased return on investment through Komatsu’s next-generation autonomy systems.

This new flexibility is critical in an industry facing challenging site conditions and rising demand, says Komatsu in the statement.

Following a similar route to that employed by road-going vehicles, Komatsu South Africa GM Hermann Hollhumer says the company’s rationale for implementing SDVs is to produce equipment with the same hardware but modern software and newer digital technologies.

He notes that it is easier and cheaper to update the software of a mining truck or to add a technological solution to help with its optimisation or improvement, than it is to replace a truck when new technology is developed. Typically, for a larger mining truck, its life cycle is expected to have 15 or more years.

“Over many years, there’s always been a lot of data on mining vehicles. “These machines are self-monitoring for machine self-protection, but also measure productivity numbers,” explains Hollhumer.

He says that, historically, mining vehicle data has been aggregated, communicated and converted into information through a fleet management system – such as Komatsu’s Dispatch – and that in future, this gathering of data will become even more important.

This data is communicated by a network or downloaded, and then analysed through algorithms, AI or manual analytics before it is acted upon by the operations team.

Based on the data, Komatsu is able to identify any anomalies in a truck’s operation, which can drive future fault-finding or can be analysed to develop improvements in the future.

Komatsu intends to use the data derived from equipment to drive continuous improvement practises.

“If it’s measured, it can be managed,” says Hollhumer, adding that vehicle-derived data can be compared against certain key performance indicators or management tools to then activate an improvement process where anomalies occur.