Title

Mining Telerobotics for Underground and Open Pit: An Implementation Progress Report

Mining Telerobotics for Underground and Open Pit: An Implementation Progress Report

Authorship

BAIDEN, GREG

BAIDEN, GREG

I am this author

DOI

10.5151/2594-357x-5MinFe-971-982

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Abstract

Telerobotics focused on mining is currently being introduced into production systems around the world. Mining companies in Canada, Sweden, South Africa and Australia have tended to lead the international charge to this form of technology for the mining of underground and open pit operations. While this introduction is taking place a few basic questions have yet to be answered. How many machines can a single operator run? How many types of machines can a single operator run? A new Canadian Research Chair in Robotics and Mine Automation has been established at Laurentian University. This chair will investigate these questions and many more through a series of experiments in a newly established telerobotics laboratory that connects a Laurentian teleoperation workstation to model mining machines at Cambrian college’s e-Dome. The laboratory will support many experiments allowing researchers to physically run multiple robot scenarios differing the numbers and types of machines at one/quarter scale. Further experiments are being designed to investigate the potential for managing time delays in telerobotics. This paper reviews the state-of-art in the field and describes the laboratory, experiments and some preliminary results achieved to date.

Telerobotics focused on mining is currently being introduced into production systems around the world. Mining companies in Canada, Sweden, South Africa and Australia have tended to lead the international charge to this form of technology for the mining of underground and open pit operations. While this introduction is taking place a few basic questions have yet to be answered. How many machines can a single operator run? How many types of machines can a single operator run? A new Canadian Research Chair in Robotics and Mine Automation has been established at Laurentian University. This chair will investigate these questions and many more through a series of experiments in a newly established telerobotics laboratory that connects a Laurentian teleoperation workstation to model mining machines at Cambrian college’s e-Dome. The laboratory will support many experiments allowing researchers to physically run multiple robot scenarios differing the numbers and types of machines at one/quarter scale. Further experiments are being designed to investigate the potential for managing time delays in telerobotics. This paper reviews the state-of-art in the field and describes the laboratory, experiments and some preliminary results achieved to date.

Keywords

telerobotics, mining, automation, teleoperation, robotics

telerobotics, mining, automation, teleoperation, robotics