PERTH/SINGAPORE -- As a lightning storm descends on BHP's sprawling iron ore mines in northwest Australia's desert, some 50 huge trucks and 20 drills churn along undeterred.
They all are autonomous, and largely controlled by workers in a high-rise building over 1,000 km away. It is the nerve center for massive amounts of data streaming between Perth and the ore-rich Pilbara region, as well as other control centers as far afield as India and Chile.
