Western Australians are often quietly proud of just how automated and sophisticated our mining sites are.

When chatting with US or UK colleagues, the mining industry isn't where they expect the most innovative robots to be found. But infact we have a huge fleet of autonomous haul trucks driving around the Pilbara, along with autonomous drills and autonomous bucket reclaimers.

Despite our success, as an innovator it often feels like Mining companies are unwilling to explore cutting edge technology. If you've ever tried to pitch your latest technology idea to a mining company, you've probably felt like it fell on deaf ears. Mining companies are happy to view proposals but can are dreadfully slow when accepting them.

I think that innovators often learn the wrong lessons from our automation successes. They look at the driverless trucks and think "yes, all these mining companies want is fewer people, and I can deliver that"". But really, successful automation projects focus on labour saving as their last value proposition. Don't be fooled by the representative who says they want to save on-site costs. They most certainly do, but there are other things that are much more important.

Safety is the biggest driver for automation. Any good automation project needs to stand up a strong safety case. Haul trucks are also a great example of this, as crashes involving human driven haul trucks are often fatal for the drivers, and can result in lengthy production delays while the incident is investigated.

Some emerging Australian startups are providing good safety oriented solutions. Presien is an Australian company that provides a computer vision based safety system. This system detects people who are too close to heavy equipment and shines warning lights to get them to stop, while also alerting the driver to the presence of the person. Jeavons Robotics provides a blast hole quality assurance service on blast pads. Their robots drive on the pad after it has been drilled and autonomously deploy sensor payloads to make sure the holes were drilled correctly. Many people have died while walking on blast pads due to the unstable ground, and so automating this task directly improves safety.

Another strong driver is business productivity. Although this driver can often be coupled together with safety. This is because when any dangerous event that had a fatality or similar outcome occurs, the mine site is shut down. This shut-down is directly related to a production loss. Labour saving is often lumped into a productivity saving, but typically labour is not that high on the list of input costs and producing more product is usually a better investment of effort.

One big problem with productivity driven automation is that it's often quite difficult to assign the new technology to the actual productivity outcome. For example, did the mine site's productivity increase because of the new train loader arm, or is it just that there weren't as many cyclones this year. Or perhaps the people on site just push the equipment and worked extra hard.

A final way to get robotics deployed is to do something that no-one could do before, or was soo costly that it was done rarely. A good example of this is in conveyer belt idler detection. The Australian company Chironix is currently developing a rover that can drive up and down alongside a conveyor belt, using a thermal camera to detect idlers that are overheating.

An example of something that wasn't possible before robotics was available is in-pipe non-destructive testing. The local Perth based company Nexxis provides pipe inspection robots that allow mining companies to see the condition of the inside of their pipes. Allowing them to make better decisions on what parts of the fixed plant will require an upgrade on the next shutdown.

Western Australia leads the world in automation. Our companies have proven that they will invest in technology, we just need to make sure the value is described in the right way.

3 Ways To Build A Successful Robotics Project in Mining

Western Australians are often quietly proud of just how automated and sophisticated our mining sites

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