Mining companies betting on autonomous technology to make dangerous jobs safer

CALGARY –

Forget concerning the canary within the coal mine — consultants say the day is coming when there will not even be a necessity for a human.

The world mining trade has come a good distance for the reason that days when coal-blackened miners would carry a hen underground with them in hopes its misery would alert them to the presence of poisonous gases.

Today, corporations are using every thing from driverless haul vans to remote-controlled and robotic drilling machines to take away human labour from a few of their most hazardous operations.

Saskatoon-based Nutrien Ltd. — which has been working to develop tele-remote know-how at its community of six potash mines in Saskatchewan — efficiently mined a whole manufacturing wing at its underground Lanigan website final fall with no single human setting foot within the space.

Using a mixture of radar, cameras, superior sensing techniques and cutting-edge applied sciences powered by synthetic intelligence, Nutrien was in a position to function one in all its large potash boring machines from a management room a couple of hundred metres away from the lively mining face.

“It was just a huge success for us,” mentioned Shannon Rhynold, Nutrien’s vice-president of potash engineering, know-how and capital.

“Traditionally in potash mining, you’ve got these 250-tonne, massive pieces of equipment. There was always an operator sitting in the cab, running the joysticks, watching for various geological markers. And one of the big challenges has been, ‘how do you remove them from that machine?”‘

The feat — the results of a number of years of intensive engineering work and experimentation — was an organization first, with the aim of creating potash mining safer by eradicating employees from probably the most hazardous underground areas.

“Let’s be honest, when you’ve got a 250-tonne machine that’s cutting into rock, there’s noise, there’s dust, there’s heat, there’s vibration,” Rhynold mentioned.

“And because you’re opening that new ground, you’re always at risk of what’s in the ground above you, what’s on the walls on the side of you.”

Mining has all the time been a harmful occupation. The dangers are most vital in underground operations, the place employees face the potential for every thing from cave-ins and fires to floods and toxic air.

But open-pit mines, too, include potential hazards — together with collisions and heavy tools rollovers. Statistics from the Workers’ Compensation Boards of Canada present there have been 51 office fatalities within the mining, quarrying and oil and gasoline extraction industries on this nation in 2021 alone.

That’s why security has been one of many predominant drivers behind an ongoing, large transition in the direction of automation within the trade, because of latest advances in AI and digital and distant know-how.

At the Boddington gold mine in Western Australia, human drivers have been changed by a completely autonomous haulage fleet of 36 vans. In Chile, mining big BHP is putting in autonomous drills at its Spence copper mine. Chinese telecom agency Huawei has been putting in 5G know-how to permit underground mine employees to get replaced by machines operated from the floor.

Here in Canada, Teck Resources Ltd. is already utilizing an autonomous haulage system at its Elkview steel-making coal mine in British Columbia.

“Automation is changing where a mine actually gets controlled — it doesn’t have to be at the mine site,” mentioned W. Scott Dunbar, head of the mining engineering division on the University of British Columbia.

Productivity is one purpose mining corporations are making the transfer to automation. A tele-remote operated mining machine, for instance, does not have to take breaks, and does not have to pause for shift adjustments.

At an investor presentation earlier this yr, Imperial Oil CEO Brad Corson mentioned the corporate’s fleet of autonomously operated heavy-haul Caterpillar vans at its Kearl oilsands mine in northern Alberta is demonstrating 10 to fifteen per cent increased productiveness than staffed vans.

“(An autonomous truck) can start reversing much, much more quickly than a staffed truck could do. And they can also pass by each other much more closely than you would ever allow with staffed trucks,” Corson mentioned. “So it really enables much faster loading.”

The swift tempo of automation is altering the varieties of jobs obtainable at mine websites, in some circumstances making software program abilities extra useful at some corporations than the power to drive a truck.

Language within the present collective settlement between Teck Coal Ltd. and United Steelworkers Local 7884 — which comprises a whole part about “technological change” and lays out the employer’s obligations within the occasion that “mechanization or automation of duties” results in job losses — illustrates the nervousness some workers could really feel concerning the prospect of remote-operated tools and driverless vans.

But Nutrien says its tele-remote mining program has not eradicated any jobs in any respect — it is merely moved tools operators from a hazardous bodily location to a secure management room setting.

Imperial, too, says its former truck drivers have not misplaced their jobs, however have been redeployed to different elements of the group or retrained to function different tools.

In reality, Rhynold mentioned he believes distant and autonomous know-how has the potential to make mining a extra inclusive trade that’s extra enticing to ladies, older employees, the bodily disabled and extra.

“When you can work in an air-conditioned room, and here’s the bathroom and here’s the coffee maker and here’s your nice ergonomic chair . . . I think that opens it up to much more diversity,” he mentioned.

“It potentially makes mining interesting to a wider range of people.”

Mark Crouse, trade account government for mining with software program big SAP, mentioned he is been listening to mining prospects speak concerning the potential for distant and autonomous know-how for greater than 20 years.

While the trade has solely not too long ago began shifting extra quickly on this route, Crouse mentioned, he believes a day is coming when nobody must go underground in any respect to mine the Earth’s assets.

“Remember how not that long ago people were using flip phones, and how quickly things shifted? It’s not that far off,” Crouse mentioned.

“The capabilities are already there. The technology already exists.”

This report by The Canadian Press was first printed June 25, 2023.