AUTOMATION
Autonomy all areas
Paul Moore talked to the key stakeholders in mining fleet
automation, both surface and underground, and from
drills to haulage to networks, to see just how far things
have come
hile a lot of the focus on autonomous
mining has focussed on haul trucks,
some of the most exciting progress
has been made in recent years in autonomous
blasthole drilling. To get the latest on fully
autonomous drilling progress, IM spoke to Tyler
Berens, Product Line Manager, Automation at
Epiroc Drilling Solutions. He had this to say on
the progress so far: “It’s been fun to watch and
be a part of the drilling automation journey in
mining. Even a few years ago we were just doing
trials. Progress has been in two parts, firstly
proving that the technology works from an
efficiency/real NPV and safety point of view, and
second that all the promises we had made on
paper could actually be delivered in terms of the
algorithms. And it has come together
beautifully, being proven at a number of large
mining operations. If anything the hypotheses
we put forward in terms of performance have
been shown to be conservative.”
He adds: “In the beginning there was a mix of
manual tasks like tramming and autonomous
tasks like single hole drilling; combined with
getting the obstacle detection part right. In
addition we had to work on being able to
automate multiple hole drilling and the different
types of drill paths and hole patterns. Next was
being able to handle tricky drilling condtions;
and this has come under what we call our
Autodrill 2 programme, taking drill automation
to the next level. This was done for rotary
drilling first, then more recently for DTH and in
fact we just released our last Autodrill 2
software to the market in early 2019. Autodrill 2
in our opinion completely changes onboard
automation. Not only is it covering the drilling
and drill movement, it looks at the drill’s work
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10 International Mining | APRIL 2019
capacity based on the consumables being used
and applies operational limits. It even ‘listens’
to the ground during drilling to adjust water
feed and air control as necessary and make
energy savings. The drill has real embedded
intelligence. Customers that have used Autodrill
2 are saying it has transformed their operations
even from the first generation of drill autonomy,
that shows how far we have come. Line of sight
projects are rare now, with most projects now
involving control rooms, again this shows the
confidence that comes with the proven
technology.”
Berens said that the market has also
expanded in terms of focus from being very
much Australia, Chile and South Africa focussed,
to getting interest from lots of other challenging
mining areas, both for teleremote and also fully
autonomous drills – such as other parts of Latin
America, Central Asia/Russia and elsewhere.
“New projects are
starting up frequently,
for example we are
implementing a
teleremote drilling
system at Anglo
American Los Bronces
currently. Overall we
have automated drills
now running on all
continents except
Antarctica.”
“In the early years, it
was about proving the
system was robust
enough and learning
from our mistakes in helping operations go from
zero to full drill autonomy. And that learning
Drill Controller Leighton Whatuira operating four
autonomous drills from Roy Hill’s Remote
Operations Centre (ROC)
phase now means we have what you could call
an automation project blueprint in place, which
we have divided into five phases. Looking back
to the pioneers in the mining industry, the likes
of Rio Tinto and BHP that implemented it early
are now running whole mining areas
autonomously rather than small mines or parts
of operations. The employment effect has also
not been as marked as some feared, while there
are fewer operators managing fleets of up to 8
or 9 drills at once from ROCs, in many cases,
some have been able to retrain in aspects of
digital technology related to automation.”
He continues: “Back to the blueprint, this has
allowed us to speed up the time taken to safety
implement drill automation by a staggering 85%
from the first projects to those we are
implementing now. It has become more plug
and play. Added to this we had the foresight to
include RCS automation ready computing
capability on all our blasthole drills from 2006
onwards, so retrofitting any of those machines
relatively easy. In a real sense, actually almost
all of our fully autonomous drills have
effectively been retrofits anyway, as the
conversion is done in the mine. So we are also
bringing new life to our existing drill fleets, with
‘new’ autonomous drills from the factory
actually in the minority but growing. In the same
way, with our ASI investment, mining customers
are also looking for interoperability and we have
been at the forefront of that transition in the
industry.”
Berens says that in terms of actual drill
models, the Pit Viper PV-270 was the pioneering
model as it had the largest footprint in terms of
installed units, but now Epiroc has automated
all the main blasthole drills in its range, such as
the PV-351s at Goldcorp Penasquito but also the
smaller PV-230.
Graph showing Epiroc Autodrill 2 results versus
manual drill operation