Abstract
The autonomous and teleoperated mining revolution presents some new challenges in the form of maintaining reliable visibility for remote operators. The typical mining environment, which exposes the cameras and optical sensors to high levels of mud, dust, and impact, manifests itself in operational interruptions, the need for personnel-intensive in-situ visual verification, and regular maintenance. This presentation recounts the experience, lessons learned, and the results of using novel self-sufficient self-cleaning cameras in autonomous haulage and other remote monitoring applications. The presented case study will also touch on some practical challenges of remote monitoring, such as the bandwidth limitations of the network, and IP management at the mine and the solution which was developed to overcome that challenge. Furthermore, a representative business case for the value of visibility in autonomous mining and the Return On Investment (ROI) for implementing self-sufficient self-cleaning cameras will be elaborated. Moreover, a case studies detailing a fleet-wide remote monitoring application in the context of haulage at an open-pit coal mine and its effect on safety and rear-aspect low-speed collisions is offered. Lastly, the challenge of visibility on some other equipment such as blast hole drills, the implemented solution, and the operational impact of the improvement are discussed.