Technology is the lever for the advancement of any industry today. As an entrepreneur, if you want to make significant progress in your venture, it’s best to do a market search to know the technology your fellow business people are using.
Of course, you want to be the first to know the best trends and innovations to improve your processes.
In that light, the mining industry has seen a tremendous transformation in the technology available for exploring and extracting ores from their natural settings. Some mining sites are sunk too deep, threatening human personnel. To take care of that, miners employ mining technology such as robots that can operate with minimal human intervention. In case of any accident, there is no loss of human life.
Technology is essential to make mining works easy and improve workers’ safety while on site. To keep you informed, below are tech trends and innovations that are driving the mining industry:
- Digitalisation
The safety of employees is always a priority for any mining company. In most cases, mining exposes workers to risky environments. Thus, it’s become essential for companies to consider improving their employees’ safety. And one of the solutions you’ll see in mining companies is digitalisation. For example, geolocation monitoring tools can be used to know the exact location of their workers in real-time. It can be underground monitoring or open land.
In addition, you can give your workers some wearables they can use as alarms to call for help in case of any danger. Thus, you can initiate a quick evacuation whenever a team member raises the alarm at the monitoring site.
- Automation
When you think about technology, one of the most used technological advancements in most fields is automation. It’s a critical solution for work processes as it helps you achieve maximum productivity. With automation, you can work 24/7 and allow your workers time to rest or do other work.
The mining industry incorporates automation, especially in deep sites where automated trucks and robots are monitored and controlled remotely. Automation technology can do the whole cycle of the mining processes, such as blasting ores, putting the ores on trucks, and lifting them to the ground.
With the increased demand for metals, such as lithium, used to manufacture electric automobile batteries, increasing the working hours is the only way to meet the demand. Furthermore, automation is a way to achieve that.
In addition, long-time exposure in some mining sites might be a health hazard for miners. Only short site visits are possible. However, it would help if you automated your mining processes to keep the work going.
- Drones
Besides the mentioned innovations, the use of drones in mining sites has found widespread acceptance. You can use a drone for aerial surveillance of your mining site. In addition, you can still use a drone for remote supervision.
In areas inaccessible to humans, especially during exploration, you can opt to deploy a drone to study the terrain of the landscape. In this case, you can fit your drone with a still or motion camera for taking pictures. Once you’ve seen the area’s nature, your engineers can plan how to stage the mining process with the right technology.
You can also use drones for delivery purposes. A drone can be fitted with a Global Positioning System (GPS) for tracking purposes. Then, you can automate your drone and send it to deliver some essentials to your workers.
- Internet Of Things (IoT)
is a term used to refer to the interconnection of smart objects and devices such as sensors, vehicles, and actuators. The purpose of the interconnection is to facilitate communication and the exchange of data. This way, they can listen to each other through a model called ‘publisher-subscriber model.’
The model includes a device that initiates a communication, which is referred to as the publisher, while the other devices become subscribers. In the model, the subscribers can publish information for different devices.
In most cases, IoT devices are supposed to capture real-time data in their environment and relay it to the cloud for storage or an actuator to take action. You can expect IT technology to grow significantly as mining works become more complex. And to solve this puzzle, IoT comes in handy to improve processes.
Final Thoughts
Mining is critical for sustaining local and international companies in their manufacturing processes. As a result, miners must be apt to their task to ensure they meet the increasing demand for minerals. And to ensure that, they must use the right innovations and emerging trends for competitive advantage like the ones illustrated in this article.
