http://www.vancouversun.com/index.html
Safety concerns drive mining industry to embrace mechanized performance of repetitive tasks
Increasingly, the mining industry is turning to robotics. In some parts of the world, drones and driverless trucks are being used for mining operations. In B.C., most of the robotics so far are used in drilling. “Underground, we are further ahead than across Canada in terms of either using robotic or semi-autonomous-type pieces of equipment, particularly with drills,” said John Thompson.
A part-time professor at Cornell University, Thompson is the founder of PetraScience Consultants Inc. and is a Chair at the Canada Mining Innovation Council. Many of the machines used for drilling at the New Afton copper-gold mine west of Kamloops are automated or partly robotic.
“Our jumbo drills are semirobotic,” said Sean Masse, mine manager for New Afton, which has both open pit and underground operations. The big Sandvik drills are 12.5 metres long, two metres high and three metres tall. The 21.8-tonne drills bore the holes for the explosives that blast ore free.
“Our surveyors will draw up a design for how the drilling should go, and then we put that card into the jumbo’s computer, and the jumbo will automatically take the drill-bit to where the hole is supposed to be on that pattern. The only thing the operator does is make sure it’s not going to drill into where there’s a remnant of the last (explosive) round.”
Shotcrete sprayers and longhole drills are also robotic. The former, which sprays concrete to reinforce rock walls in the mine, requires an operator, but only to manoeuvre the boom into place.
“The nozzle itself has to rotate so that it’s spraying in an even pattern,” Masse said.
“It can also boom in and out. If we’re trying to spray the lefthand wall, it will rotate the head and go forward and backward on its own.”
Like the shotcrete sprayer, the long-hole drill requires an operator to position the machine and tell it how far to drill. But the rest of the work the drill does on its own.
“It will drill to the end of the first rod, load a new one and drill through that rod to the end of the hole. It’s doing a rote task that normally you would normally need to have an operator doing.”
There are many reasons for the industry to turn to robotics, including efficiency and productivity.
But John Meech says the No. 1 reason for using robotics in mining is safety.
The professor of mining engineering at UBC cites the use of driverless ore haulage trucks in underground mines.
“Driving haulage trucks is a pretty boring job,” Meech said.
“Imagine, over the course of 12 hours, driving back-andforth between point A and point B. By the end of a 12-hour shift, a human tends to get pretty tired, and accidents happen. Every year, somewhere in the world, two truck drivers are killed.”
For the rest of this article, click here: http://www.vancouversun.com/technology/Fully+automated+mines+distinct+possibility/9779423/story.html