Global mining giant Rio Tinto has announced on Wednesday the doubling of the company's fleet of automated-driven truck haulers currently deployed in the Pilbara region of Western Australia to further raise its ore production.

In a statement issued on the same day, Rio Tinto said that the move will hopefully support its goal of hauling some 330 million tonnes of ore from its mining sites in Pilbara by the second half of 2015.

The driverless haulers have been in trial usage by Rio Tinto for two years now and increasing the units serving the company's sites will mostly be seen in Yandicoogina, which is Rio's biggest mining project in the region.

During the vehicles testing period at the West Angelas mine, the trucks were largely utilised in collecting and dumping waste products, but come their new tasks on Yandicoogina, the GPS-guided haulers will be used to move Pilbara ores.

The sprawling mining site will see the services of 10 automated haulers by April 2012, according to Rio Tinto, which added that this year alone, the company is on track to ship some 240 million tonnes of ore around the world, coming from the setbacks suffered in the first three months due to severe weather conditions.

Lumped with its closest rivals BHP Billiton and Fortescue Metals Group, the three major mining players supply an estimated 40 percent of global raw materials shipments required by countries engage in steelmaking such as China and Japan.

Rio Tinto said that with billions more of capital expenditures, its Pilbara production capacity will soon reach the company's long-term goal of 433 million tonnes of ore output each year.

Also, the company's additional capability of moving its mined ore by using the automated haulers, which was described by Pilbara operations president Greg Lilleyman as "the first operational deployment of this technology in Australia, or anywhere on this scale," will hopefully expedite the realisation of such goals.

So far during their trial period, the trucks have been deemed successful in moving more than 42 million tonnes of materials and covering a cumulative area of about half-a-million kilometres, which Rio Tinto said, was made possible by the units' pre-programmed courses and guided by GPS.