Automation & robotics ICMM releases 2021 safety performance data
On July 28 2022, the International Council of Mining & Metals (ICMM) published a report that lays out the 2021 safety performance of its members, entitled ‘Safety Performance: Benchmarking Progress of ICMM Company Members in 2021’. ICMM began collating and publishing company members’ safety data in 2012 with the aim of encouraging information and knowledge-sharing among members, and catalysing learning across the industry, in its work to prevent injuries and eliminate fatalities from an industry filled with many potential hazards.
In order to keep track of its progress towards this goal, ICMM collects, analyses and publishes the safety data provided by its company members each year – who together represent a third of the global industry. The report analyses fatalities based on the cause and provides safety performance metrics by country and company. In 2021, 43 people from ICMM company members lost their lives at work. By comparison, previous years’ numbers were 44 in 2020, 287 in 2019 (the year of the Brumadinho tailings dam collapse in Brazil) and 50 in 2018. Of the 2021 fatalities, 12 were related to mobile equipment and transportation, while eight were caused by ‘fall of ground’ incidents.
Company member operations in South Africa had the highest number of fatalities at 27, accounting for 51% of the total fatalities across ICMM members. Fall of ground incidents have been identified as a chief cause of these events by the Minerals Council South Africa, and is linked to the depth at which South Africa’s precious metals industry operates. Eleven members reported zero fatalities including Alcoa, BHP, Boliden, Hydro, JX Nippon Mining & Metals, Minera San Cristobal, Minsur, MMG, Newcrest, Newmont and Rio Tinto. “ICMM’s new three-year strategy is focused on ambitious collective action,” said Rohitesh Dhawan, president and CEO, ICMM. “Sharing lessons from failure is vital to improving safety, but it is not enough to achieve our goal of zero harm. As an industry, we can draw strength from how far we have come to drive down fatalities and injuries, but we will remain deeply uncomfortable until zero harm is actually achieved. We will work together to explore the root causes of why harm continues
to occur and hunt for the next step change to make zero harm a reality.” Source: ICMM
Above right: Automation and robotics can be used in dangerous situations to reduce risk to humans.
Below: The Explora XL can also replace humans to complete some of the most dangerous operations in mining.
we ended up with about 10–12 hops, jumping between robots and nodes, to get back to us with the live video stream.” Trying to locate the robots from above ground, within the complex structure of the mine, presented another challenge during the six day operation. “It’s called a ‘room and pillar’ mine,” Macdermid explains, which means it is made up of “big square pillars, one after the other, all the way through the mine. So, when you’re a kilometre deep, and you’re just looking at pillar after pillar – well, you can only count so many pillars before you get lost”. Using LiDAR (light detection and ranging) technology, however, Macdermid was ultimately able to “pull up a live view and match the shape of
the pillar up to the precise map that we had, so we were able to navigate from there”.
Record-breaking robot ADR’s operation in the US is unofficially the world’s deepest remote inspection, reaching a record-breaking 1.8km into the mine. And while forging a path through uncharted territory is never easy, Macdermid says that, in the end, the operation “highlighted the fact that our Explora XLs are really field-hardened. We had robots operating for 8 hours a day, covering tens of kilometres. We validated that the Explora XLs are where they need to be for doing the dangerous operations that they need to do.” Of course, there remains the possibility that a mine could collapse while the robots are inside carrying out their survey. What then? “If a giant rock falls on the robot and crushes it,” Macdermid says, “that’s great. Because that could have been a person.” In the near future, Macdermid is confident that there will be a “huge push for robotics and automation underground – and not necessarily by removing jobs” and provides the example of a driver who operates a load within a mine. Using automation, Macdermid says, that driver “could operate the load remotely, above ground, where they can sit in an air-conditioned office rather than being a kilometre and a half underground. And it makes it that much safer.”
There is no denying that some element of risk will always be present when it comes to mining – which is why the development of automated and robotic technologies is vital for the future of the industry. Having carried out the world’s deepest remote inspection, ADR are blazing the trail – now is the time for industry to follow. ●
12 World Mining Frontiers /
www.nsenergybusiness.com
Aedka Studio/
Shutterstock.com; Australian Droid & Robot
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