SURFACE DRILLING
efficiency, it allows real-time control and monitoring of multiple drills across the operation.“ Within Epiroc with LinkOA we now have a mature autonomous haulage offering alongside a mature autonomous drilling solution – both running off the same platform. That is a huge advantage as we can then leverage development across both – for example looking at the interactions between trucks and drills but also taking the learnings from an autonomous haulage solution and bringing some of those across to drills and vice versa. That means a more informed and connected autonomous workflow, but we aren’ t stopping there as we are now working on autonomous blasting as well and bringing that into the autonomous ecosystem, all progress on our ultimate goal at Epiroc of having a full integrated autonomous layer, all on one platform.”
LinkOA is now also the main nerve centre for autonomous drill fleets, even if that fleet is all Epiroc machines or a mixed fleet. The goal is to standardise the interaction with an autonomous piece of equipment, whether that is an Epiroc drill, a non Epiroc drill or even a haul truck.“ From a strategic perspective, automation for us is much more than building out automated machine cycles – it’ s about connecting the ecosystem and the user experience in the control room as well as creating a new perspective for controllers that feels more intuitive around managing and executing the autonomous mission without having to understand the nuances and intricacies of that piece of equipment.”
Blignaut said there are things that an autonomous haul truck controller is doing that are very interesting from a drilling perspective, like how they interface with other pieces of equipment. CAP and LinkOA are fundamental to that way of standardising how autonomous equipment interacts with other equipment and how different controllers work and function. " Its about executing the autonomous plan and process flow as efficiently as possible without looking at the control room as separate banks of controller stations for separate equipment OEM systems. If controllers can all use the same application screen, then that would bring big benefits from a streamlining point of view."
To some extent this is already happening with the two types of drills and CAP.“ You can have an autonomous SmartROC and an autonomous Pit Viper – traditionally used in very different applications with a very different look inside the cab. Today with CAP from the control room perspective they look the same.”
LinkOA is also relevant to mixed fleets and autonomy. In the past Epiroc would have been reluctant to automate a competitor drill where a customer might have asked for this if they had a main Epiroc fleet but also some legacy drills of another brand. Today with LinkOA technology, as well as capabilities from RCT, also part of Epiroc, those drills can be converted to autonomy and integrated in the same autonomy platform as the Epiroc machines.“ We strongly believe that overall, the autonomous Pit Viper will bring the biggest wins in terms of productivity and performance, but we are now able to take that legacy non Epiroc equipment and automate it to the same operational level from a control room point of view. Then when it comes time to replace legacy machines, there is far less change management involved.”
This also makes automation in drilling more accessible and more attractive for production drilling contractors and even the quarrying and industrial minerals sector where Epiroc is now seeing significant demand for its autonomous SmartROC D65s for example – autonomous drilling is no longer just for Tier 1 owner operator mines.“ These customers aren’ t just looking at drill automation from a productivity and safety standpoint – they see real wins from a staffing point of view as well as skilled operators in remote sites become harder to find with competition within the industry. And for Epiroc this new demand brings us a fresh perspective on automation and helps us further improve the technology. Some of these smaller mines have more complications and constraints than big mines for example, which we have to address. Overall, if we can make it work for them, then we will see improvements in the software and in best practices.”
FLANDERS ARDVARC – making experience count
FLANDERS’ drill automation heritage goes back a long way- to 2009- and it argues that it has consistently proven that it can outperform other automation providers and OEMs in key KPIs for drilling such as rate of penetration, cycle times and maintenance availability.
Wayne Chmiel, Global President of the newly formed division FLANDERS Technology Solutions told IM:“ ARDVARC drill autonomy provides predictable, consistent productivity, reducing manual operation and fatigue-induced variability. In an era where it’ s difficult to get technical people at the minesite, ARDVARC enables uniform operations, training and drill controls to standardise the drill fleet. It also brings higher machine availability due to machines operating consistently within the OEM-designed performance parameters, eliminating machine abuse.”
The company says that the ARDVARC autonomous control system allows for superior control. Gerhard Labuschagne, Global Product Director for ARDVARC adds:“ Autonomous operation of the blasthole drill involves the
Epiroc PV-351 converted to autonomy with FLANDERS ARDVARC at Antapaccay copper mine, Peru
propelling and GPS positioning, levelling, collaring, drilling, multi-pass drill rod handling, bit retraction and levelling jack retraction. Automation facilitates exceptional control, speed, precision and eliminates any wasted time during the drilling cycle. The FLANDERS system additionally provides complete access to drilling and machine health data – and unlike machine OEMs there are no‘ black boxes’ as with the ARDVARC control system, the data is your data. FLANDERS technology is agnostic to any drill rig on the market, and its open-architecture control system enables mine sites to modernise mining drills with industry-leading automation and machine-health monitoring capabilities.”
So why has FLANDERS chosen to form a new business unit? It brings together complementary technologies and teams from across the company. Chmiel:“ We have done this so that we can really streamline our development and customer focus. It also helps us build on our long history of electrification to integrate advancements in decarbonised and decosting
technology solutions. It positions us to accelerate our customer decarbonisation and automation journeys. It will also allow us to leverage our legacy- 77 years of experience in the mining industry, and the more than 180 drills with ARDVARC technology solutions installed. Finally, it brings together the proven power of ARDVARC OEM agnostic surface drilling autonomy with FLANDERS’ other technologies including, FREEDOM for Haul Trucks and our ability to offer both mechanical and diesel electric hybrids.” Chmiel also highlighted the depth of experience in the team, with most having spent decades on the ground across key mining areas including North America, Australia, Africa and South America. Much of this experience has been from the customer side. Labuschagne used to be a Principal Engineer for Anglo American and was involved in drill autonomy as far back as 2013, when FLANDERS converted some of Anglo’ s first drills at Mafube Colliery and Kolomela iron ore mine in South Africa. This experience extends to the drill OEMs themselves. FLANDERS VP Autonomous
International Mining | APRIL 2025