EDITORIAL & OPINION – COMMENTARY — Robotics transforming mining

During the 20th century, the Canadian mining industry earned a global reputation as a leader in the development of advanced technology. Today, many of the technological innovations that were conceived on Canada’s shores are helping companies around the world mine more quickly, cheaply and safely than ever before.

As the millennium draws closer, Canada’s reputation as a global centre of mining technology excellence shows no signs of diminishing. In fact, the Canadian mining industry is on the edge of a new era in mining technology development. The equipment for the “telemine” — a mine operated entirely from the surface — is being tested at Inco’s Ontario division.

Canadians who toiled far beneath the earth’s surface with picks and shovels 100 years ago could never have imagined the technological sophistication of the telemine. Their 21st century counterparts describe current drilling and mucking technology as rudimentary, the beginning of a new style of underground mining. In the future, miners in a surface control room will be able to track broken ore, set production targets and direct underground vehicle traffic. They will be able to sculpt rock to provide the best environment for production equipment to work, and they will be able to control development and production drilling. The robotic vehicles they direct from the surface will be equipped with self-diagnostic abilities and will signal mechanics when maintenance is required.

What will this “telemining solution” mean to Canadian mining operations? A dramatic increase in productivity, a safer work environment, the transformation of uneconomic ore to economic, reduced operating costs, faster recovery and extraction of ores from the deepest and most difficult areas, and a global competitive advantage.

The telemine is not a pipe dream. During the past century, the Canadian mining industry developed all of the ingredients — telecommunications, process-control computer software, global positioning systems (GPS), artificial intelligence and robotics — to make it an attainable reality.

Mining is one of Canada’s greatest natural resource industries. It propelled us through the 20th century and has the potential to fuel us into the 21st century. I cannot begin to imagine how technologically advanced telemining will become if it is encouraged to thrive and prosper.

— The author is chief executive officer of Inco. He wrote this column at the request of Mining Works for Canada, a program designed to increase awareness of mining in this country.