Interoperable autonomous mining

I was speaking to someone recently who asked me why I stopped blogging - and timely enough, the Future of Mining conference happened to record a recent short speech and published it on youtube. The video describing Epiroc Autonomous Pit Viper blasthole drills performance and the future of autonomous interoperability is below. I'm not used to summarising so much in 10 minutes, but I briefly discuss the business impact of autonomous blasthole drills, increased production, increased quality, and more consistent performance. I make the argument that autonomy is a critical first step prior to realising an integrated operation: essentially you can not achieve consistent real-time control of your fleet if your reliant on the variability of manned operators, and without the information (rich data plus semantics) produced by autonomous equipment. To achieve the objective of a zero-entry (no people) integrated mine you will need to automate all the mining equipment, and waiting for a single supplier to achieve this means delayed realisation of the business case. Collaboration of multiple suppliers enables best-of-breed and flexibility ensuring we see a fully autonomous and integrated mine sooner.

I'll start blogging again now - covering some of my backlog from the last few years on autonomous mining, but also back to some technical topics as well. Stay tuned.

Mining Robotics: An overview survey

Robotics is typically associated with manufacturing robotics (e.g. PUMA arm), military robotics (e.g. Predator UAV), and more recently consumer robots (e.g. Roomba), medical/healthcare (e.g. Da Vinci) and the automotive industry (e.g. driverless cars). Not many are aware of the prevalence of robotics in the mining industry and the steps the industry has taken towards automation and autonomous robots.

Autonomous mining

The mining industry is a world-leader in autonomy, for example Rio Tinto's Western Australia operations has the worlds largest fleet of autonomous vehicles (150 autonomous trucks) - significantly larger than any operational system in the military. Rio's Western Australia operations are all controlled from a operation centre, which controls 40 mines, 30 pits, trains, power stations, and ports all based thousands of kilometres away. In terms of data, the WA system generates around 2.4 terabytes per minute of data. There is quite a lot of intelligence and innovation involved.

Overall, mining can be broadly broken up into a few key phases:

Mining process

• Exploration, assessment and planning. In this phase, new resources are identified and a new mine site is designed and constructed.
• Drill and blast, material is extracted from the ore.
• Load and haul, material is taken from the point of extraction to the processing plant.
• Processing, where the material is converted/crushed into a more useful (sellable) form.
• Transportation, where the product is loaded and transported, usually via rail to a port and then on to a ship to its final destination.
• Stockpiling, occurs at various points in varying quantities where appropriate.

At each of these steps some kind of machine is involved, and I'll give you a brief overview of the machines and some of the relevant research or commercial automation systems available.

Exploration and remote sensing is a massive research area in itself in other industries, and mining is no different. UAV's are seeing use in aerial surveys on mine sites, with large data sets fusing visual (photogramatery), infrared, LIDAR, InSAR, gradiometry, seismic and other geodesic measurements.

West Angelas mine LIDAR scan

On the ground new sensor fusion systems are being developed to classify the mine and ore structure and to identify the richest ore deposits. Combining all this data into an overall mine model is a difficult machine learning task. The Rio Tinto Center for Mine Automation are doing active research in this field, and the Gatewing X100 is an example of an UAV used for mapping in mining.

Drill and blasting is a mining-specific operation and there has been significant advancement in robotics in this area due to the operational hazards involved with this line of work. Robots can accurately drill holes that won't collapse and are easy to load, and Atlas CopCo and Flanders both have commercial automation systems for drilling which are well on their way to delivering autonomous drill rigs in the near future (trial drilling systems have been in use on production sites since 2008). Atlas Copco first started their work in automated drill rigs in the 1980's and now has over 2,500 machines running their control system technology.

The load and haul stage is perhaps the most interesting as it is the first area where autonomous vehicles are used in regular production environments. Whilst autonomous loading is still an area of research (See these CSIRO projects on dragline and shovel loading automation), there are plenty of commercial automation systems for haul vehicles.

This includes CAT Minestar Command, Atlas-Copco Scooptram, Sandvik Automine, Komatsu Frontrunner. Mineware provide shovel and dragline automation systems, with LIDAR systems that build digital terrain maps on the fly. Autonomous Solutions has a number of autonomous vehicles, including trucks and dozers.

Continuous miners and long wall mining have seen multiple automation systems including commercial systems from Eickhoff and CAT. Excavators are no stranger to automation, CMU automated excavators and truck dumping back in the late 90's, and work is ongoing at PWRI in Japan and Hyundai research. The range of commercially available autonomous mining vehicles put military UGV's and automotive companies to shame.

Transmin Rocklogic

Processing plants have been fully automated, although for many metals, (e.g. iron ore), there isn't much too the process in the first place. Companies such as Metso have fully automated crushers, conveyors, and also include computer vision systems to identify and classify rocks/froth/bubbles, etc. FLSmidth and Calibre Transmin have developed automation systems for rock breakers are available allowing the rockbreaker to automatically park and deploy. In-Pit Crushing and Conveying (IPCC) systems allow parts of the plant to be mobile, and even these systems have been largely automated by companies such as Sandvik.

Autonomous train

Transporting material from the mine is usually performed by a train, and autonomous trains have been around for a while. In fact, LKAB have been running driverless trains since the 1970's. The main difference in modern mining applications being that the goal is now fully autonomous operation, and that the trains can stretch many kilometres in length, making control a more difficult problem. Major miners such as Rio Tinto are automating the trains in Western Australia, with companies such as Ansaldo STS and New York Air Brakes providing the technology.

Finally, with stockpiling Stacker-Reclaimers have been automated, with companies such as ThyssenKrupp and iSAM leading the way

Rio Tinto - Remote Operation Center

Overall there are a large amount of automated and autonomous mining equipment available, and projects such as Rio Tinto's mine of the future at West Angelas and Yandicoogina sites, Vale's Carajas Serra Sul S11D site and Nautilus's Solwara underwater mining are all pushing towards fully autonomous sites where we may see no humans involved in operating future mine sites.

So if you want to find out more about robotics and automation research in mining there are a few great places to start:

• Major miners such as Rio Tinto and BHP have innovation centres all around the world.
• Australia's CSIRO, Australian Centre for Field Robotics, Australia Coal Association Research Program and the AusIMM. West Angelas is a notable site.
• South Africa's CSIR have a strong mining research focus, and AngloGold have an innovation centre. Finsch underground mine is a notable site.
• North America, the Canada Mining Innovation Council.
• South America, Vale has a number of research centers. El Teniente is a notable site.
• In Europe LTU are a major research institute in mining automation. Kiruna is a notable site.

The future of mining is autonomous robots, and we are well on our way!

Transmin Rocklogic wins WAITTA 2012 Innovation Award

Transmin's rockbreaker automation product, Rocklogic, has won the 2012 WAITTA Innovation award.
ScienceWA covered the story.

Rocklogic features a number of world-first innovations, including tight integration with vehicle automation products allowing the rockbreaker to efficiently interleave operations with haul trucks or loaders. In addition, Rocklogic is the first system for hydraulic booms to allow automated parking and deploy, as well as an active collision avoidance system.

It's been the product of many hours of hard work to bring to market, so it is fantastic to receive this recognition.

On to the nationals!

Collision Avoidance in Mining Conference

I gave a presentation on the Transmin Rocklogic rockbreaker collision avoidance system at the 3rd Collision Avoidance in Mining Conference held in Fremantle.

The speakers were:

• Simon Ridge - Department of Mines and Petroleum: provided an overview of regulation and risk management in WA.
  
• Stewart Bell - Department of Employment, Economic Development and Innovation: provided an overview of collision incidents in Queensland, and made an announcement indicating Queensland may make collision avoidance technology mandatory.
  
• David Quayle - Industrea: discussed systems integration issues in mining, and contrasted it with aerospace and the automotive industry.
  
• Patrick Glynn - CSIRO: provided an overview of the development of collision avoidance technology in mining, and discussed CSIRO's old LHD automation project.
  
• Luke Schelosky - SafeMine: discussed SafeMine's proximity / collision detection products.
  
• Marcus Punch: discussed functional safety standards (e.g. SIL), the standards that the industry is moving towards, and the "Proven-In-Use" clause for the latest 61508.2 standard.
  
• Matthew Watson - Rio Tinto Iron Ore: discussed issues in rolling out technology and how it affects operators ('users'), managers, and maintenance personal.
  
• Rhys Sherborne - APS: gave an overview of Automated Positioning System machine guidance products.
  
• Harland Attwood - Javpac: introduced a new physical barrier product designed to separate heavy vehicle traffic.
  
• Peter Woodford - LSM: discussed cameras and operator visibility.
  
• Elliot Duff - CSIRO: gave an overview of projects at the Autonomous Systems Laboratory.
  
• Nicky Guenther - SICK: presented a new range of SICK products for proximity detection and provided a comparison with RADAR products.
  
• Adrian Boeing - Transmin: Rocklogic collision avoidance system, and installation case study.
  
• Robin Burgess-Limerick - UQ: Operator cognitive load.
  
• Natalie Tindale - MB solutions: Operator fatigue.
  

For me the highlight was CSIRO's Autonomous Systems Labs robotics and SLAM work, particularly on the North Parkes mine site. Since they don't have a YouTube video of their work on the ASL channel, here is something similar:

Remotely Operated Mining

I gave a presentation on the Transmin Rocklogic rock breaker automation system at the Remotely Operated Mining Projects conference. All in all it was a fairly decent conference focused around the theme of remote operations for mining, focusing predominantly on integrated planning, remote operation technology, and the design and construction of remote operation centers.

Talks were given by:

• Greg Lilleyman, Rio Tinto - an overview of remote operations
  
• Matthew Michalewicz, SolveIT - integrated planning for mature organizations, interesting overview of some of the wine industry supply chain issues
  
• Patrick Warrand, Wesfarmers Premier Coal - a open overview of issues for 'small' mining operations (Note: Small is of course a relative term compared to the massive operations of BHP and Rio)
  
• Jeremy Newman, Schneider Electric - a suppliers point of view to automation
  
• Jock Cunningham, CSIRO - an overview of CSIRO activity in mining, and their SLAM technology. (WAMBOT was multi-agent SLAM, CSIRO does automotive SLAM and a novel handheld indoor SLAM 'Zebedee')
  
• Brendon, Leica Geosystems - an overview of Autonomous Solutions Inc (they do lots of autonomous systems for military and agriculture), and Locata - a GPS alternative
  
• David Beck, Beck Engineering - a case study of Simulation Aided Engineering
  
• Adrian Boeing, Transmin - remotely operated rockbreaking
  
• David Cavanagh, Integrated Energy - an overview of remote operation center designs for oil and gas, and mining
  
• Lucas van Latum, Modular Mining - Goal orientated planning and the Observe-Orientate-Decide-Act loop
  
• Reuben Kooperman and Peter Hunt - architecture for Remote Operation Centers (or Integrated Planning Centers) - including two buildings I go past on a regular basis and never fully realised what goes on inside - the City of Stirling building, and the ECU Joondalup library.
  
• Mike Lomman, OpX Solutions - planning considering bottlenecks
  
• Andrew Jessett, MineWare - realtime dragline and shovel monitoring and support/maintenance orientated ROC's.
  
• David Hattrick, Oracle Corporation - Oracles approach to managing mining data and information
  
• Richard Taylor, Concept AV - Video walls
  

I put the Rocklogic animation up on youtube, it's pretty neat. Gives a short overview of the systems features - Remote operation, collision avoidance, automated movements (auto-park, auto-deploy), etc.

AIMEX

I visited the Asia-Pacific International Mining Exhibition (AIMEX), held every four years. There was a lot of interesting technology on display, with a strong presence of simulators, drills and long-wall gear. Being mining, a lot of very large machines were on display, and the exhibition hall was huge. Automation also had a small presence.

Atlas-Copco had a set of their autonomous drill rig simulators on display, and I managed to get a chance to go through the process. Drilling is a non-trivial task, and it takes at least two weeks for an operator to familiarize themselves with the process. The autonomous drill system certainly makes it easier to operate the equipment, but the drill holes still have to be lined up manually - arguably the most challenging task.

Atlas Copco Autonomous Drill console

Eickhoff had a demonstration of their automated long-wall system, that uses the Indurad radar system.

CAT were displaying some of their new autonomous equipment, soon to be installed in
Western Australia at FMG's Solomon mine. CAT is always a slow mover to adopt technology but it is interesting to see how fast this technology is being adopted by the major Australian miners, now including Rio Tinto, BHP, Newcrest and FMG.

Eickhoff longwall automation 

Below is a video of the CAT system I captured at AIMEX. Apparently this system actually does realtime path planning and adjustment as opposed to following a pre-programmed path like other (Sandvik) systems.


You can watch some more videos of autonomous mine vehicles on youtube:

• CAT 'command' system for haul trucks and MineGem. (See CSIRO's work on LHD)
  
• Atlas-Copco scooptram for loaders (See Joshua Marshall's work on Scooptram)
  
• Sanvik Automine for loaders.
  

Underground

Few updates this month because I've been underground. And I don't mean I've joined some kind of strange sub-culture or gone in hiding, I mean literally 1.5km vertically underground to commission a Transmin automated Rockbreaker (there's not much internet down there!). A few things I learnt / experienced about hard-rock underground mines (most of which are very obvious):

• Block caving is insane. The idea is to create an extraction level under the ore body, then continuously blast the ore into smaller rocks that can be processed, leaving a massive growing "sink" hole on the surface. You also need a very very very long conveyor belt.
  
• The tunnels are quite large, as some very large vehicles need to drive through the mine.
  
• All the tunnels have a 'clean' look to them, largely thanks to the use of shotcrete (i.e. concrete reinforcement around the tunnel rock).
  
• It takes 45 minutes to drive down to a depth of 1.5km
  
• When driving, give way to larger vehicles, or vehicles with explosives.
  
• Its difficult to move around quickly, you will easily break a sweat in no time.
  
• Batteries weigh a lot when you need to carry them around on a belt all day
  
• You use a lot more oxygen if you panic, or move around a lot
  
• There is a complex system of ventilation channels with really really big fans providing all the air
  
• It is really easy to get lost in a large underground mine
  
• There is an underground dining area. It is called the 'crib'. I don't know why.
  
• If anything bad happens, you don't have much of a chance, especially if you are not aware of all the intimate details of how the mine operates. (ie: haven't been there for more than a year)
  
• Explosions are loud
  
• Ground movement is bad and very very loud
  
• There is an awful lot of dust
  

All in all an interesting experience, but all the dust certainly didn't do any good for my eyes or my lungs. I've been coughing a lot even after being out of the mine for a week as the very fine dust just gets everywhere.