DECATUR - Welcome to the future, and the rise of the machines.

Caterpillar Inc. is working on a robotic, unmanned version of its huge mine haulage trucks, including the 797 model - the world's biggest - that's built in Decatur.

These driverless, 280-ton monster trucks will rumble around mine sites all over the world, steered by systems hooked into satellite navigation and controlled by state-of-the-art computer software fed from a network of sensors.

Off-site technicians will monitor the trucks as they are loaded by other robotic mining equipment, and one company in Australia is even looking at having its mines serviced by autonomous freight trains with no one on board.

It all sounds like a futuristic special on the Discovery Channel, but Caterpillar and its mine business partners are very serious, and they've got firm goals in sight. In a recent statement, Caterpillar said it planned to have "autonomous trucks" working at selected mine sites as early as 2010.

Autonomous truck technology is actually nothing new. Caterpillar developed a successful version and demonstrated it back in the mid-1990s. Caterpillar was one of several leading companies working on this, but industry experts say mining operations didn't have the money to spend back then to make the technology work at their sites.

All that has changed in the face of sky-high commodity prices, which have generated lots of cash and increased the pressure to boost yields and efficiency. BHP Billiton, which is partnering with Caterpillar to develop the driverless truck, is a global mining company with 39,000 employees in 100 locations in 25 countries extracting everything from oil to diamonds, coal, silver and uranium. It earned a

$13.7 billion profit in 2007 on turnover of $47.5 billion.

Driverless trucks boost mine efficiency because they don't earn wages, never take a break on their 24/7 schedules and can be programmed always to take the most efficient route from A to B.

Caterpillar says they operate safely because of their sophisticated on-board systems, and BHP says robots save human employees from risk. "We believe autonomous haulage systems can significantly improve safety," said BHP spokesman Ruban Yogarajah, in an email interview from Australia.

"They improve safety by reducing the number of employees in front-line contact with operating equipment and by reducing the risk of human error ? It will also allow BHP Billiton to overcome the challenges presented in attracting scarce labor to remote locations and help lower maintenance costs and improve fleet management."

Other mine companies, such as Australia's Rio Tinto, say jobs displaced by autonomous systems will be swallowed in a net job gain as mines expand to meet increased demand. And Chris Curfman, president of Caterpillar Global Mining and vice-president of Caterpillar Inc., said the robotic future looks bright: "This application of new technologies will have a positive impact on mining operations around the world."

There are other applications of autonomous technology that have aims very different from making mines run better, however. Caterpillar supported a software company's entry in a competition for robotic cars organized by DARPA, the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency. This is the research and development arm for the U.S. Defense Department, which is keen to push the technology envelope to develop autonomous weapons and surveillance systems.

DARPA's record for getting the job done and coming up with bold new technologies that change the face of the world is impressive. Computing and network innovations pioneered by the agency in the 1960s and '70s created what became the Internet.

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