Mining companies betting on autonomous technology to make dangerous jobs safer
CTV
Forget about the canary in the coal mine -- experts say the day is coming when there won't even be a need for a human. Mining companies are already employing everything from driverless haul trucks to remote-controlled and robotic drilling machines to remove human labour from some of their most hazardous operations.
Forget about the canary in the coal mine -- experts say the day is coming when there won't even be a need for a human.
The global mining industry has come a long way since the days when coal-blackened miners would carry a bird underground with them in hopes its distress would alert them to the presence of toxic gases.
Today, companies are employing everything from driverless haul trucks to remote-controlled and robotic drilling machines to remove human labour from some of their most hazardous operations.
Saskatoon-based Nutrien Ltd. -- which has been working to develop tele-remote technology at its network of six potash mines in Saskatchewan -- successfully mined an entire production wing at its underground Lanigan site last fall without a single human setting foot in the area.
Using a combination of radar, cameras, advanced sensing systems and cutting-edge technologies powered by artificial intelligence, Nutrien was able to operate one of its massive potash boring machines from a control room a few hundred metres away from the active mining face.
"It was just a huge success for us," said Shannon Rhynold, Nutrien's vice-president of potash engineering, technology 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?"'
