World’s Largest Robot Hauls Ore Through Western Australia

It’s dirty, it’s dull, it’s enormous, and it’s probably one of the most productive robots on the planet

It’s often the case that the more useful a robot is, the less exciting it is. The robots that do the hardest jobs tend to be straightforward solutions to straightforward problems, because that’s what works. The (self-declared) world’s largest robot is an efficient, grubby example of this—it’s an autonomous train that recently hauled 28,000 metric tons of iron ore 280 kilometers across the Australian desert.