Progress Toward Zero Entry Mining: Automation Enabling Safer, More Efficient Mining

Around the world, there are some complex orebodies that necessitate truly "manless" operations to facilitate the safe economic extraction of ore in certain mining zones. This is called "zero entry mining," because no human need enter the mining zone. Zero entry mining has the potential to significantly enhance the value of marginal or unrecoverable ore reserves and turn significant quantities of mineral resources into ore reserves. Australia is currently leading the charge in developing and deploying autonomous mining solutions and is now seeing benefits in productivity and safety. Currently, the autonomous solutions are applied to parts of the value chain (e.g., trucks and drills) and initially used original equipment manufacturer (OEM) proprietary approaches.