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... it is vital that the sensors deployed are capable of operating at the highest levels of situational awareness
It ’ s taken for granted nowadays that our lives , both in the workplace and at home , have been improved immeasurably through automation . GPS can guide us from Land ’ s End to John O ’ Groats without a glitch . A car on the assembly line can be completed to a customer ’ s precise specification by keying in the design requirements before a single rivet has been punched . And we ’ ve all been told how our smartphones today have more processing power than was available to the entire NASA team when Neil Armstrong was sent to the moon .
In extreme working environments , however , where heavy plant and machinery meet dust , obfuscation and harsh weather conditions , industrial automation is cutting through the robot rhetoric and delivering extraordinary results .
So , what are the challenges ?
Let ’ s start with those four Ds . Mining environments are invariably dirty , and by their nature dangerous too . According to the International Council on Mining and Metals ( ICMM ) ‘ Safety Performance Report : Benchmarking progress of ICMM company members in 2021 ,’ 43 people from ICMM member companies lost their lives at work . This is slightly down on the 44 in 2020 and an even greater drop from the 287 deaths in 2019 – albeit that included the 250 fatalities in Brazil when the Brumadinho Tailings Dam collapsed . An objective of the ICMM and doubtless all other organizations like it is to achieve ‘ zero harm .’ Gone are the days of picks and hammers ; modern mining operations deploy some of the largest plant and automation systems on the planet .
Replacing the number of human operators with machine-automated processes and equipment should take us a step closer towards our objective , reducing the field of risk and injury . But it ’ s not as simple as that . Much of the automation in mining happens above ground , with autonomous mining trucks ( AMTs ) and other plant traversing cluttered and hazardously dusty terrain . In fact , above-ground operations provide a whole new set of challenges on their own .
Where are the technological glitches ?
AMTs rely upon data , deploying a multitude of sensors to navigate their terrain , without any human intervention , as they make their way along mine haul roads . Data is processed to calculate set numbers of maneuvers , such as determining speed of travel around nearby machinery and equipment , all leading to potential decisions needing to be made by onboard software . Likewise , the exact location of each AMT is tracked , with data shared via wireless networks and GPS , working in tandem with onboard obstacle detection and avoidance systems .
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