industryfocus
AUTOMATION AND ROBOTS ARE NOT DRIVING THE FUTURE OF MINING – THEY ARE ITS FUTURE. IAN NEUBAUER REPORTS.
Mining in Australia has come a long way since European settlers began excavating the land with shovels, picks, buckets and wheelbarrows. Today, 100-metre-high bucket wheel excavators, drilling rigs as big as buses, and haul trucks that weigh 500 tonnes when fully loaded work around the clock inside pits up to 300 metres deep and three kilometres wide in environs that are variously described as blights on the landscape or spectacles of human ingenuity. However, most of these machines are a
generation or more old and can only increase output by means of multiplication. Throw in the perpetually increasing costs of fuel, environmental protection levies, taxes and labour, as well as an acute labour shortage, and a picture emerges in which the longevity of Australia's mining sector is anything but guaranteed. The answer lies in smart technologies – high-
tech machines with embedded processors, sensors and logic and communication parameters – which combine remote automation and robotics to deliver significant productivity gains. "The ultimate goal," according to Paul
McRoberts, industry solution manager for Rockwell Automation, "is to develop evolutionary, self-healing machinery and equipment that can effectively and efficiently interact with the mining environment." Here, we look at three very different examples
of developing smart technology/autonomous machinery and how they're forging the future of mining in Australia.
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Illustration: Kurt Parton at illustrationroom.com.au (images for illustrative purposes only)
