Today, a number of companies have fleets of autonomous trucks, trains and loaders at mine sites, or are piloting the use of these vehicles. These efforts are a significant leap forward, but they are just scratching the surface of how the mining industry can use autonomous systems.
The key to taking autonomy to the next level will be the increasing use of robotic process automation; descriptive, diagnostic, predictive and prescriptive analytics; scenario modelling and artificial intelligence technologies such as machine learning. Advanced analytics, machine learning and scenario modelling are already embedded in some mining operations and are being tried and tested in others.
Mining companies can re-skill the workforce to keep up with these changes, and some are already doing so. In the future, such re-skilling initiatives will need to be ongoing and continuous because the speed of innovation – accelerated by AI – will mean that the skills needed in the industry will evolve constantly.