Mining companies betting on autonomous technology to make dangerous jobs safer

Forget about the canary in the coal mine — experts say the day is coming when there won't even be a need for a human.

The global mining industry has come a long way since the days when coal-blackened miners would carry a bird underground with them in hopes its distress would alert them to the presence of toxic gases.

Today, companies are employing everything from driverless haul trucks to remote-controlled and robotic drilling machines to remove human labour from some of their most hazardous operations.

Using a combination of radar, cameras, advanced sensing systems and cutting-edge technologies powered by artificial intelligence, Nutrien was able to operate one of its massive potash boring machines from a control room a few hundred metres away from the active mining face.

"It was just a huge success for us," said Shannon Rhynold, Nutrien's vice-president of potash engineering, technology and capital.

"Traditionally in potash mining, you've got these 250-tonne, massive pieces of equipment. There was always an operator sitting in the cab, running the joysticks, watching for various geological markers," she said. "One of the big challenges has been, 'how do you remove them from that machine'?"

The feat — the result of several years of intensive engineering work and experimentation — was a company first, with the goal of making potash mining safer by removing workers from the most hazardous underground locations.

"Let's be honest, when you've got a 250-tonne machine that's cutting into rock, there's noise, there's dust, there's heat, there's vibration," Rhynold said.

"And because you're opening that new ground, you're always at risk of what's in the ground above you, what's on the walls on the side of you."

Mining has always been a dangerous occupation. The risks are most significant in underground operations, where workers face the possibility of everything from cave-ins and fires to floods and poisonous air.

But open-pit mines, too, contain potential hazards — including collisions and heavy equipment rollovers. Statistics from the Workers' Compensation Boards of Canada show there were 51 workplace fatalities in the mining, quarrying and oil and gas extraction industries in this country in 2021 alone.

That's why safety has been one of the main drivers behind an ongoing, massive transition toward automation in the industry, thanks to recent advances in AI and digital and remote technology.

At the Boddington gold mine in Western Australia, human drivers have been replaced by a fully autonomous haulage fleet of 36 trucks. In Chile, mining giant BHP is installing autonomous drills at its Spence copper mine. Chinese telecom firm Huawei has been installing 5G technology to allow underground mine workers to be replaced by machines operated from the surface.

Here in Canada, Teck Resources Ltd. is already using an autonomous haulage system at its Elkview steel-making coal mine in B.C.