FATIGUE MONITORING & COLLISION AVOIDANCE
or by Caterpillar secondary to this. The event response for the operator is an instant audible alarm as well as a seat vibration.
If an alarm goes off, then the Caterpillar Safety Monitoring Center in Peoria will quickly assess if the event requires further action to be taken and if so immediately contact the mine FMS dispatch team who will then normally speak to the truck operator by radio or SMS to ask them if they need a break and if they are OK. This all happens typically in less than two minutes. There are different scenarios – if an event happens while the truck is stationary in a queue then the action taken may be different to if the operator is out on the main haul road, for example. All the event data received by the Caterpillar Safety Monitoring Center is also analysed for longer
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term trends and Cat provides daily, weekly and monthly reports as requested. As far as operators are concerned, they receive reassurance through training that it isn’ t about spying on them and that it is there to keep them safe – they won’ t be disciplined just because an alarm goes off. This means there is much less likelihood of an operators trying to tamper with the system.
To date there are nearly 2,000 DSS units being used in mining operations, and the vast majority of mines using it have their DSS units monitored by the Caterpillar Safety Monitoring Center which is staffed by specialists trained to recognise fatigue.
In terms of surface fleet trends, early on in DSS rollout, the focus was on ultraclass fleets, as these were deemed to highest risks. But more and more it is being applied at smaller mines and quarries
Elemental Analysis and on other types of mine vehicles, such as water bowsers, personnel shuttle buses, ADTs etc.
Dawson says that aside from the value of the system itself from a safety standpoint, the reason it has been so well received by mines and has won out over competing technologies is the level of service support, how the data is gathered an x
David Edwards is Product Manager – Safety Technology at Caterpillar. He states:“ Our customers know that fatigue is a problem, but without the data, they don’ t really know how significant an issue it is.“ The DSS gives them that data so they can truly measure it.” Caterpillar is also taking that visibility further by combining it with other on-board technologies to develop risk profiles based on as much data as possible to improve site safety.“ We can use these technologies to bring insight to our customers in a very real way. For example, a mine site may not believe it has an issue with fatigue. But at the same time, they’ re experiencing wear and tear on tyres. When we combine fatigue information with equipment health information, we discover that the tyres are wearing out because operators are using the berm as a rumble strip when they nod off. The data allows us to make that connection.”
There are many contributors to fatigue and distraction— long working hours, low lighting, repetitive duties, shift schedules and solitary work environments. All are characteristics of mining operations and are all common to both surface and underground mining. The big news with Caterpillar DSS is that it is now being used underground at three gold mines and two other mines in Australia and one gold mine in the USA, on full fleets of both trucks and LHDs; so at six mines in total. The major issue of course is not having a GPS signal, as usually the speed of the surface truck is taken by the DSS from the GPS. So underground, the system taps into the vehicle onboard analytics itself to get this information. The underground mine needs to have a good fibre optic network in place; currently all events can be uploaded to the customer central monitoring system in less than 15 minutes, though of course in the both the surface and underground situations, the alarm and response to an event to the operator is instant.
To give a surface early stage project example, HSE Mining in 2016 conducted a trial of Caterpillar DSS fatigue monitoring on four Cat 789C haul trucks at South Walker Creek coal mine.“ Fatigue is a significant risk in the mining industry and we are committed to building on efforts made to date and seek further solutions and control strategies,” said HSE. The 60-day trial was conducted in three phases: n Silent Phase: No alarms or contact from the monitoring centre n Alarms Enabled: In cab alarms activated for fatigue events
42 International Mining | JANUARY 2018