Automation & robotics
“When we’re talking about automation, what people forget is that we are only automating autonomous trucks. There are a lot of other vehicles around these trucks that are driven by people,” says Chirag Sathe, a mining automation expert and co-author of the Global Mining Guidelines Group (GHG) white paper “System Safety for Autonomous Mining”. “So, it’s a semi-autonomous environment – there can be a lot of human-machine interaction.”
The three pillars of implementing autonomous systems
This crossover can create new risks in terms of safety, which is why mining operators need to take care and consider what the key factors are when introducing an automated system – which Sathe breaks down into three main pillars: “people, process and technology”.
Of the three pillars, the first – people – presents the most challenges for mining operators, Sathe says. If mining personnel are not properly trained to work with automated systems, and to understand how these systems function, it can increase the risk of accidents. “In the past, anybody could drive a truck, or at least get a licence to drive, but now it’s totally different,” Sathe notes. “[Haul trucks are being] controlled from a central control room, nobody’s driving – and the trucks are operating on site, maybe 1,000km away. There a limited labour pool available, so it’s going to take time – you can’t get trained people overnight, you have to invest in it.” With regards to the second pillar – process – the challenge that mine operators face lies not only in changing the ways in which they operate, but also in how they think about their operations. For example, when an autonomous truck breaks down, a new system has to be put in place to retrieve it. Previously, there would be a driver in the truck, who would just call maintenance and ask for help. When an autonomous truck breaks down, it sends out a signal, and there has to be a process in place to take over the broken down truck. Finally, the third pillar – technology – means that the system should be fit for purpose. Mining is carried out in very harsh environments, so whatever technology the industry deploys has to be able to withstand the challenges of its surroundings and of the tasks it has to carry out. Sathe notes that, in mining, original equipment manufacturers (OEMs) are the ones responsible for developing autonomous technologies, with mining companies as the end users. It’s taken time for these two groups to gain a better understanding of each other – for OEMs, that means understanding the requirements of their end users, and for mining operators it involves understanding the requirements to successfully adapt autonomous products to fit within a mine’s processes. “With more and more experience of using these technologies, I
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think that gap is bridging – but it’s still there,” Sathe warns, though still remaining optimistic on the matter. Of course, it’s still early days in many ways. It was only in 2008 that the first automated haul truck was introduced in the form of Komatsu’s Autonomous Haulage System (AHS), which was implanted at Codelco’s Gabriela Mistral copper mine in Chile. From there, it first reached Australia when Rio Tinto introduced automated trucks to its Yandicoogina iron ore mine in the Pilbara region of Western Australia in 2012, following a multi-year, five-truck trial in its West Angelas mine. That was a mere decade ago – a drop in the ocean that is the history of mining – so automation is still very much in its nascent stage, while also being very effective at the tasks to which it has been put to work. It’s also worth noting that it’s really only haul trucks that have seen widespread use of automation across the industry – for other parts of the mining vehicle fleet, such as graders, loaders and dozers and more, it’s going to take longer still. Their operations are considerably more complex than those carried out by haul trucks. “That’s where the end user and product developer talking to each other and helping to solve the problem will be the most beneficial,” says Sathe.
“In the past, anybody could drive a truck, or at least get a licence to drive, but now it’s totally different. [Haul trucks are being] controlled from a central control room, nobody’s driving – and the trucks are operating on site, maybe 1,000km away.”
The system safety approach So how, then, can mining operators look to ensure the safety of their on-site personnel working alongside autonomous vehicles and equipment in semi- autonomous environments? Sathe sought to answer this question in the white paper that he co-authored for GHG – “System Safety for Autonomous Mining”. The paper looked to increase the awareness of the system safety approach and the advantages that it can offer within the mining industry and to OEMs. “Normally, when automation is talked about, even in robotics, the first thing they say is to have functional safety analysis. However, when we look at mobile mining automation, functional safety is not applicable,” explains Sathe. “And that’s where there was a biggest issue between OEM and the end user – because of the lack of understanding or a lack of applicability of functional safety standards.”
Functional safety provides a framework of systems and established practices that offer confidence when delivering and maintaining safety-related control measures. However, it is unsuitable for many mining processes as it does not adequately cover systems that
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