A fraught election just reshaped the next steps for deep sea mining
Brazilian oceanographer Leticia Carvalho has been elected the next secretary-general of the ISA, a leadership change that could slow the rush to strip-mine deep sea ecosystems.
Despite ongoing advances miners still haven’t crossed the hurdle of fully implementing automated underground vehicles and are opting for intermediate steps instead, according to a post by CIM Magazine.
One of the major hurdles to automating load-haul dump machines was replacing human judgement required for filling a bucket. Researchers from Queens University, who partnered with Atlas Copco, found a way to monitor the force/velocity relationship between the loader and the muck pile.
In field tests Atlas Copco successfully applied the technology on its LHD machines. Clients were interested but were still not comfortable handing over full operations to the robots.
With the software to build an LHD machine that could finally haul, dump and load autonomously, Atlas Copco began discussing commercialization – and that is when the project hit a common glitch in mining: resistance to change. “When you look at the business case, it seems that very few totally autonomous machines are sold,” said Ola Pettersson [Atlas Copco’s group manager for LHD applications]. “It is often difficult to convince clients to go for autonomous equipment. So we actually tweaked the project and decided a better path for us was to do something different and make it a load-assist function that can be added to any loader. We think this would be especially good when you run your loader with a radio remote controller.”
2 Comments
Mike Failla
Resistance to change is inevitable. Overtime,if the technology proves itself the change will occur. We moved away from mules and carts,we moved away from manual transmissions, we moved away from many things that we no longer use because something better came along. How much stuff was replaced by you i-phone for example?
Yynitzian Pretinova
Autonomy shall over run it self with time . It has been reported by ostensibly reliable sources that over 90% of all jobs created in the USA during the most recent 8 years are part time only . Laid off workers buy neither cars , nor houses , nor Gold and not much Silver . As well , autonomy is so popular (a ha) with the working class and unsupportive of the ruling class . If many have their way we shall not mine anyway , we shall ride buses and trams . If we cannot afford cars and trucks I suppose the independent such as myself shall ride our hybrid cross 21 speed cycles .
Atlas Copco is a great company , their drills are neat . I just cannot accept the continuing fail of a One World ending to all freedom . The Sunnis and Shiates cannot keep from killing each other , how they suppose Christians and Islamic Peoples shall coexist ? A clue , they all have guns and nobody is going to take them away .
I prep , LOL , for the 1 World instigated civil war . LOL , a cruel and heartless , unneeded end to a world that could have been so great .