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Robotic Mining Arrives
Leif Bloomquist writes: "I've been involved in something called the Mining Automation Program, a 5 year R&D effort to create tele-operated and autonomous mining machines. The program just wrapped up, and the world's first totally robotic mine is now in operation in Sudbury, Canada. It's very cool stuff, and yes, in a way, it's a precursor to the robots in "Descent". :) We had to bring together space+robotics technology, wireless LANs, and even virtual reality and video game interfaces. The whole point is to enhance safety by having no humans underground, and to boost productivity by saving the time to travel underground and have one driver controlling a whole fleet."
Did they also make a robotic canary to let the other robots know when to get the hell out?
There's already lots of robots in use by manufacturers, robots that stand around bolting, welding, lifting, and so on all day. This story scared me at first, because I started thinking that these things would be not only autonomous but MOBILE as well.
Turns out they're not. They're basically remote controlled devices, with limited decisionmaking of their own. Whew.
The site's already slashdotted, too. Geez.
What's your damage, Heather?
I have this dream (dream 'cause I know I'll never get around to it) of having about a thousand little bug like robots that get their energy from grass. They would spend the day under the porch and come out at night to take little snips off the lawn. The lawn would maintain a constant 3" length. BTW, they would come out at night so they don't scare the snot out of the neighbors.
Maybe this means that the average price in mined commodities will go down. Of course the pessimist in me says that the corps will just pocket whatever savings are realized through these methods.
What I'd really like to know is if any of the advancements they made to make the project work will be given back to the space and robotics community they tapped.
"Me Ted"
BOSTON SUCKS!
If these robots work like the author says, hopefully we will be able to start putting these things onto Asteroids and begin mining the materials from there. Basically, unlimited access to minerals!
Doh!
-Moondog
This is going to put miners out of work. Hopefully it will also decrease the cost of mined goods and increase the economy such that those people can get better jobs somewhere else. I think the interesting thing that may happen is that entire towns may go under. There are a lot of mining towns in west virginia and else where that may soon be ghost towns!
Here here to the technologists, I do want to add another perspective to this article. I grew up around mines all my life, in Jamaica there are very large alumina mines that spend all there time and efforts tearing up the soil to mine alumina ore which is just below the surface of top soil. here is the problem after mining this wonderful ore the top soil is then replaced and grass is planted back
yea I'm pissed
Hello?? People aren't being put out of jobs. The machines still need mechanics (heck, even more than normal from what I've been told), and they still need operators - but the operators are on the SURFACE now, instead of 2 miles underground inside the machine.
So, what is your objection now? Humans retain their jobs... their jobs become safer and more efficient... they essentially get to play really expensive realtime videogames all day... Sorry, I must have missed where this MASSIVE crime wave was coming from.
Cheer up - you can always *volunteer* for Soylent Green.
Mr. Ska
I slit a sheet
A sheet I slit
Mr. Ska
What? You mean someone has the gall to want to keep people from performing one of the most hazardous, unpleasant, life-shortening jobs ever dreamed up? Doesn't everyone have the right to not have some machine take their backbreaking, coal-dust-breathing job? I bet next those monsters will try to take away elephant-dung shoveling! I mean, didn't we learn anything from the tragedy of the Pony Express?
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If you ever drop your keys into a river of molten lava, forget 'em, because man, they're gone. -- Jack
Tell that to the thousands of miners killed or maimed every year because their cheap arsed bosses can't be bothered spending money on safety.
Noone can sensibly oppose the introduction of technologies that remove from human beings the requirement to perform dangerous labour.
Certainly, you'd hope that laid off miners would get retraining etc. and in western countries that *might* happen depending on what unions managed to get out of the bosses.
Either way though, it's doubtful that there would be widespread use anytime soon. Even the car industry, one of the most automated manufacturing processes there are, make extensive use of human labour. It's just hidden away in the subcontracting firms that produce the components that make up a car. It's only really final manufacture that uses robots.
There has been massive automation of all sorts of processes over the last 50 years and yet millions more people are gainfully employed than were back then. By your logic we'd all still be producing wool in our back yards.
We need to create our own future where human creativity is encouraged and enhanced. Where education gives people the tools to live in a changing world.
If this is not done, then you probably have the right to run in fear from technology. Run to the hills, and be the last free man on earth, hiding in terror in the caves
Or you can help make and create the world that avoids the terrors that you see.
If you do not take control of your future, then your future will be out of your control. Help create a future that is better then the one you see.
"It is a greater offense to steal men's labor, than their clothes"
A week or so ago, I saw a program on TV about diamond mining, and how the use of very large machinery has eliminated the possibility of finding very large diamonds any more, because the rock is crushed before being brought to the surface.
But, if the mining robots were smaller in scale and used smaller digging instruments, larger diamonds (like on the order of tennis ball size), rare as they may be, could have a chance of being recovered whole.
It's also probable that smaller robots would be able to recover materials much more efficiently and in a much more environmentally friendly way.
I doubt the economies of scale of current technology will support thousands of tiny robots, or if such robots would be capable of digging through solid rock.
But it's cool to speculate.
--
Accountability on the heads of the powerful.
Power in the hands of the accountable.
What will happen as society worldwide becomes more automated, is what has already happened in the more technologically advanced societies - people will reduce their birthrates to (or slightly below) the natural replacement rate of approx. 2 children per couple. Unless a massive technological singularity takes place (like the rapid development and deployment of a nanotech "replicator") there will be no massive displacement of human labor, just gradual, incremental inroads. With less need for massive amounts of manual labor, fewer people can be more intensively trained & educated, and work in the fewer remaining skilled positions, directing or tasking the automatons. Also, as the pool of "menial" laborers shrinks - even though most tasks can be automated, it will become a "prestige" item to have actual human craftsmanship involved - their wages will increase. Look at how much plumbers, butlers, gardeners, "sanitation engineers" etc. are getting paid nowadays, not to mention artists and athletes, and just extrapolate into the future. Not everybody needs to be programmers, even today. As systems get simpler and more robust more people will be able to use them with minimal formal training (think GUI/speech/gestural recognition, pictures of food on McD's POS terminals, etc.). Plus, look at how fast the current primitive technology has taken hold. When everybody's Grandma is on the 'Net without even blinking, then we'll know it's time to wheel out the fully automated solutions to just about everything.
#include "disclaim.h"
"All the best people in life seem to like LINUX." - Steve Wozniak
#include "disclaim.h"
"All the best people in life seem to like LINUX." - Steve Wozniak
More importantly, it's not possible to have long-term standard of living increase at a faster rate than productivity. Every good and service must be produced before it can be consumed, so total consumption can't be greater than total production, and average consumption can't be greater than average production. That means that raising average production per unit of labor (i.e. productivity) is the only way to raise average consumption per unit of labor (i.e. standard of living). It's such a simple concept it's amazing that more people don't understand it.
There's no point in questioning authority if you aren't going to listen to the answers.
When you've spent 25 years mining underground only to find yourself replaced by a robot, nobody is going to employ you. We had this effect with automation practically anywhere that things are automated.
Automation leads to a number of processes getting cheaper, and hence the process owners make substantially more money. This money goes into the economy sooner or later, since obviously they don't hoard it in their hidden vaults that the automated miners have built underground, but it will definitely not serve the victims of automations directly (since they don't get any money), and its overall effect in the economy will not have enough impact to enable all these people to find new, different jobs elsewhere or be trained for them.
Face facts: Automation replaces people. These people fall through the social grid. A substantial number of these people is never going to have a proper job again. Everything else is either a cheap lie or self-deceit on behalf of the process owners. This is one of the instances where we can actually predict the future from the past.
As a state gets corrupt, its laws multiply; the most corrupt states have the most numerous laws. (Tacitus, Annales 3:27)
then by all means let's not have a human being doing it! I grew up in a mining community in the western U.S. (and have long since left) but I still keep in touch and every once in a while a miner will fall into a crusher, get run over by heavy equipment, get sucked into a conveyor belt etc. Things are much better than they were 50 years ago in terms of safety (thanks to MSHA, OSHA and the unions) but accidents still happen.
If robots make things safer, then more power to them! I personally cannot justify human beings risking their lives for profits when alteratives exist.
Where I grew up people know that mechanization is increasing (the mines hire far fewer people than in the past), and so there is a real push for people to either go into the skilled trades or college.
Times change and people must adapt....
putting the 'B' in LGBTQ+
It has always seemed like a logical step to make robots and machines power themselves. Any business that uses machines to harvest power should really figure out a way to make the machines use the same power. Then the cycle is closed and--short of machine repair and other such things--you have a self sustaining factory, power plant, mine, whatever.
The next logical step then, would be to build machines that can repair each other or even better, themselves.
The fact is, that civilization requires slaves. The Greeks were quite right there. Unless there are slaves to do the ugly, horrible, uninteresting work, culture, and contemplation become almost impossible. Human slavery is wrong, insecure, and demoralizing. On mechanical slavery, on the slavery of the machine, the future of the world depends.
-- Oscar Wilde (1854-1900)
At LKAB (Sweden) they run something like this. It's not completely autonomous, but one operator can control three drilling rigs or three loaders at once. For the loaders, everything except the actual loading of ore is automated, the loading is done via remote control. The drilling rigs can be run without supervision, for example at night. For a short blurb, see this document, pages 3 and 4. Not much, but I didn't find a good article.
There are several advantages with this setup; the miners don't have to go down into the mine, and they can sit in a comfortable office while running the heavy machines. No humans in the mine also means that they can start loading much sooner after a blast, since they don't have to wait for the blast gases to vent out. Which in turn means that the loading machines can be run for more hours per day.
And, yes, the miners love the system - when they don't have to go down into the mines, they have some spare strength left over at the end of the day to do stuff with their families, not just fall asleep from exhaustion...
Be careful when talking about rights...they are slippery beasts. Many people carelessly overstate the rights we actually have.
"Rub her feet." -- L.L.
I seem to remember people making the same argument against computers...
Easy does it!
This comment has been submitted already, 276865 hours , 59 minutes ago. No need to try again.
void digHoleToChina()
{
  locomotion.changePitch( STRAIGHT_DOWN );
  while( sensors.detectRock( IN_FRONT ) )
  {
    drill.crushRock( IN_FRONT );
    locomotion.move( FORWARD );
  }
}
"Mind, as manifested by the capacity to make choices, is to some extent present in every electron." -Freeman Dyson
"In 1995-96 there were 77 fatal injuries per 100,000 fishermen, making it the most dangerous occupation by a significant margin (the next closest was mining and quarrying at 23.2 per 100,000)".
You can read more about the huge safety problem in the fishing industry here.
--It's Pimptastic!--
there are a lot of people out there who aren't intelligent enough to be computer programmers or whatever
Don't worry -- there are alot of computer programmers who aren't intelligent enough to be computer programmers, but it didn't stop them from getting good jobs.
It's interesting that I just finished reading one of the Dorsai books, Necromancer over the weekend, and the top of that was a mine which operated with only 1 person running the whole schebang!
Of course the antagonist lost his arm, and assisted in the general downfall of civilization as they knew it... D'oh! (Who sees a Simpson's parody of Necromancer with Ned Flanders as World Controller?)
But seriously, this raises a whole pile of issues of what to do with all these people who one day will be out of jobs? Some people might look at it and see the demise of human miners and lost jobs.
Personally, I see eventual adoption of robotic miners as miners begin to retire. It's dirty, thankless work, and it's a killer! A friend of mine (no pun intended - honest) has a father who's worked in the Sudbury mines all his life. He knows no other work, but admits that it's tough!
As more robots come into use, there will be more jobs and opportunities in geology, robotic repair, etc... No lost jobs just like I don't work 20 hour weeks thanks to the fact that everybody in my office has a computer. There'll be work, and plenty of it - just perhaps less risky.
I donate all spillover Karma to the charity of my choice... Ada was still a babe despite what people may say...
I worked as a heavy equipment operator in college (wheeled loaders, backhoes, graders) and I have been wondering when someone would do this. Operating earthmoving equipment and the like via remote control (I am assuming that this is what they are doing - the site was /. 'ed when I tried to view it) would eliminate a lot of on-the-job possibility for injuries, both traumatic (crushing, falls, etc.) and long-term (back or hearing problems). It would also reduce operator stress (no more sore kidneys, working with an open cab in 120 deg. F weather and lots of dust, etc.).
All in all, automation of jobs like this is the best thing to happen to the related trade and tradesmen. When you work in a physically stressful environment and come home exhausted many days, going to class or otherwise furthering your education is a rather difficult thing to do. By making these jobs less stressful, I would think that the net effect would be to encourage the quality of life of the workers.
As for job loss, people are almost infinitely adaptable. Most of the operators or other trades could be retrained to either work as operators or as support personnel. Many of those who work in the trades don't do so because they're "too stupid to work elsewhere" but because they learn differently than how the school system says they should, or they just enjoy their trade.
The majority of tradespeople that I have worked with have readily adapted to technological innovation in the workplace (they're usually better with it than managers, etc. are...) and would gladly welcome something that would make their jobs easier.
I'm surprised how many people are concerned about reducing employment in underground mining, which is one of the worst working environments in industry. Actually, underground mining employment is way down; it peaked sometime around WWII. Miners today are heavy machinery operators, not manual laborers. This changeover produced massive unemployment in mining districts like West Virginia and the Midlands of England. Robotic mining will eliminate only a modest number of mining jobs, because there aren't that many mining jobs left.
Not to be a luddite, but you bastards! I used to make up to AUD$5000 a week after tax operating a jumbo in UG mines in Australia.
I actually have really mixed feelings about this. We usually killed 6 or 7 people a year (in an industry directly employing around 10,000), and several people I'd worked with (and one good friend) were on that list. Anything that improves safety is a good thing. It might also have some positive impacts environmentally - shift the cost break-point between UG and open cut towards UG, making for a few less topsoil-stripping open cuts. Just as much cyanide etc pollution in processing the ore either way though.
OTOH, mining was what allowed me (and a lot of other people) to finish school, go to college, and get into my current job (which pays a fraction of what I used to earn, but isn't 13 days a fortnight in a hole in the ground in the middle of the desert : ). Drill holes for 6 months, walk away with $30k in the bank (even after spending half of the last six months drunk), do another year or two of college, repeat. Mining is one of the very few occupations left in the west where poorly educated kids get a chance to get the fuck out of dead-endsville. Great steaming piles of cash - you either get an education, get some real assets, or both. Beats the shit out of flipping burgers for the rest of your life as a consequence of never makeing it out of high school.
So here's to the beginning of the end. A few less of us getting mashed against the pit wall; a lot more of us ending up stuck in low-pay, low-opportunity dead end jobs. Such is life.
If you're curious about how they actually get the bandwidth down into the mines, check out this company I did some design work for a few years back:
El-Equip Inc.
--The more you know, the less you know.
We thieves, we liars, we vandals, and poets. Networked agents of Cthulhu Borealis.
Earth has adequate resources for terrestrial needs. (See where I'm going?) But, if we were to ever build anything in space, or on the moon, then we would have to carry materials to the construction site. (Now you see where I'm going.)
Mining asteroids would make plentiful raw materials available more cheaply. Have you priced the cost of lifting a pound of aluminium into orbit? With the realistic prospect of asteroid mining, all we would have to do is launch and assemble a refining/manufacturing plant into space.
Once there, if cleverly managed, it could be used to make whatever we need. It's the old 'teach a man to fish' approach. Once we can process raw materials in space, the cost of lifting a refinery there would be recovered very quickly.
An orbiting (or travelling) refinery could make all sorts of interesting alloys that we can not make on Earth. It could make replacement parts as necessary, or build new pieces not thought of at the beginning of a mission. It could even make better use of physics to shape parts in new ways (rotation, acceleration). Such 'natural' shapes, created under gravitationally controlled conditions, just might prove to have very desirable properties.
A space-bourne refinery could be nuclear-powered without the risks of killing people or polluting the environment. It could use focused sunlight to weld parts together. Several small plants might be assembled together to make very large assemblies that we could never hoist into space (Spacedock?) from the Earth.
Gutted asteroids might become the fuselages of future spaceships, with the engines and such structures built from the materials dug out of that asteroid.
Ultimately, the point is that anything, anything at all, that gets us out there, is a Good Thing. If robotic mining and the greed for asteroid-dug diamonds is what prompts the first step, so be it.
The REAL jabber has the /. user id: 13196
The REAL jabber has the user id: 13196
What you do today will cost you a day of your life
I'm sick of technology. I wish it would go away, sometimes. I really do.
I've been reading a very good book recently, The Existential Pleasures of Engineering, by Samuel Florman... and he addresses the growing trend of antitechnology, and refutes many claims associated with this trend. I'd have to quote three full chapters just to sum up his arguements, but I wouldn't hesitate to put it on my list of 'recommended reading'.
The thing is, technology is not likely to 'go away'. To begin with, it's a gross personification to treat technology as a thing with a will of its own. It can seem that way, to be sure... but every unforseen result of technology can be traced to a human-made decision, or series of decisions.
I belive it is an aspect of human nature to experiment, to explore, and to create. In a way, Philosophy, Art, Science, and Engineering are all efforts to fulfill a fundamental human impulse. I am attending school to become an Engineer... but at the same time, I consider myself a part-time Philosopher, Artist, and Scientist.
The 'solution' proposed by most antitechnologists does involve deliberately changing human nature. But such proposals are dangerous. How do we know that we are not 'dehumanizing' ourselves even further?
---
Good judgment comes from experience.
Experience comes from bad judgment.
Everyone seems to be saying how wonderful it is that people won't have to work such horrible jobs. Think of this, if the miners could find a better job they would take it, right? Obviously they can't do better and when you eliminate their jobs, what the hell are they supposed to do? I'm sure mining sucks, I'm sure working in a sweatshop sucks, but they don't HAVE to be there, they are there because they need the money to support themselves. These companies make enough money that they don't absolutely have to fuck their workers so they can move to automated mining. A job mining is better than no job.
Don't get me wrong on the issue of socialism; I dream of a social state, but I think the workers of the world are moving away from actual production. While I consider myself a producer when I write computer code, it's not quite the same as having a tangible object in my hands, of which I can say, "Look, I made this." Those jobs that technology continues to render obsolete are by-and-large those jobs that require repetitive tasks and little in the way of deep thought.
I predict we will see workers moving away from manufacturing and resource gathering and into fields such as maintaining systems (making sure the little robots are working), organizing systems (decided where to open the new mine) and service (getting coffee for the other two groups).
The automated mines are a good step in the right direction, IMHO. Let our race move away from doing basic labor and start thinking more!
Prepare for ascent!
You've never read one single word of Marx, have you? He in fact said the exact opposite about the Industrial Revolution.
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