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Mining Companies Are Using Autonomous Trucks, Drills and Trains To Boost Efficiency, Reduce Employees (technologyreview.com)
schwit1 quotes a report from MIT Technology Review: Mining companies are rolling out autonomous trucks, drills, and trains, which will boost efficiency but also reduce the need for human employees. Rio Tinto uses driverless trucks provided by Japan's Komatsu. They find their way around using precision GPS and look out for obstacles using radar and laser sensors. The company's driverless trucks have proven to be roughly 15 percent cheaper to run than vehicles with humans behind the wheel -- a significant saving since haulage is by far a mine's largest operational cost. Trucks that drive themselves can spend more time working because software doesn't need to stop for shift changes or bathroom breaks. They are also more predictable in how they do things like pull up for loading. "All those places where you could lose a few seconds or minutes by not being consistent add up," says Rob Atkinson, who leads productivity efforts at Rio Tinto. They also improve safety. The driverless locomotives, due to be tested extensively next year and fully deployed by 2018, are expected to bring similar benefits. They also anticipate savings on train maintenance, because software can be more predictable and gentle than any human in how it uses brakes and other controls. Diggers and bulldozers could be next to be automated.
Rio Tinto uses driverless trucks provided by Japan's Komatsu.
Damn foreign trucks stealing our jobs. :-)
It must have been something you assimilated. . . .
not using mules and canaries either
Yup, it's all fun and games until your social model collapses and the unfed hopeless masses gather and hang you in your mansion.
We had the technology from about the seventies to have a smart grid of trains to go to multiple locations, but no one wanted to invest in infrastructure like that. If instead of a road system, you had cards guide by wire or a rail hookup, it could be fully automated already without all the tricky edge cases.
God spoke to me
Farm equipment has been automated for quite sometime. Even Artic fishing has a heavy amount of automation. I am surprised that this sector has taken this long to automate things like trains and haulers...
Now digger automation I would like to see; where you trace out a 3D volume and let it go. It doesn't seem as simple as at first glance. Soil densities vary and you run into obstacles that need a little planning and strategy. Doing it wrong can break some expensive parts or at least wear them out faster. Neat times ahead, hope someone posts some YouTube vids.
They probably will use a guillotine instead.
Very good news.
Too much death and long-term negative effects on the health of people involved in the mining industry, regardless of technological advancement.
In addition to that, regardless of various safety regulations and laws and struggles to enforce safety in the mining industry, most of it sooner or later went down the drain or had trivial influence.
Better take people out of the equation as much as possible in this sector and have them learn and do better stuff to do safer jobs.
A big motivating reason for using the automated trucks is reduced wear on the tires. Each tire costs a small fortune. Extending their life by 5 to 10% is a big deal.
the world used to need ditch diggers! Now I need to punch the CEO in the face so I can go to lock up to get health coverage. As no plan will take me as that think I have miners lung or something and with no job I can''t pay 10K mo for a plan with pre existing conditions covered.
The company's driverless trucks have proven to be roughly 15 percent cheaper to run than vehicles with humans behind the wheel -- a significant saving since haulage is by far a mine's largest operational cost.
I'm hoping that their new largest operational cost is prevention and mitigation of the pollution and environmental damage they create. Now that these companies can no longer claim to be the source of as many jobs, they should have a harder time externalizing these costs.
Okay, fat chance.
As hard as it is to lose your job, we've come a long way from the days when "consumption" would be diagnosed in 20-year olds who died a couple years later. Even in the USA where we tend to take worker safety more seriously, it's still a chance of death every time a worker goes underground.
The problem of what to do with displaced workers is not new. It's time we found a real solution. One that doesn't involve violent revolution/communism. Been there, done that. One that doesn't involve bogus "re-training" programs where they spend $100 million and can only point to 20 successful re-trained workers. I don't profess to have a magic answer, but it's probably going to look more like socialism than Republicans would like, and less like socialism than some Democrats would like. We're going to have to care for people without coddling them.
For all intensive purposes, "whom" is no longer a word. That begs the question, "who cares"?
Universal Basic Income will come sooner or later, peacefully or by revolution. In the US at least, welfare already costs enough that UBI would not that much more expensive. Plus, with UBI, people can still look for work without losing that income, which will be a boon to businesses that want cheap labor.
At least we can retrain them to make air conditioners, right?
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Get the miners out, let the big-ass machines think for themselves, see what happens. Shit happens, software gets tweaked, try again. Lather rinse repeat.
Good side is fewer miners get trapped in cave-ins. Bad side is those miners are now on unemployment.
No offence intended but there are always tricky edge cases. Reality is more complicated than we realize.
And yet, there are still dramatically fewer of them if you put the vehicles on rails. Ideally you'd have the vehicles locked to the track in the same way as a roller coaster, to keep them from falling off even in extreme circumstances.
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
UBI won't cover those that have a moderate, comfortable lifestyle.
It might not keep them in the style to which they are accustomed, but it will meet their needs. Not everyone is entitled to more rooms and cars than they need, and to live in San Francisco.
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
It's not about being entitled, it's about earning a living through hard work, and enjoying the fruits of that labor.
No, it absolutely is about being entitled. You seem to think that people are entitled to make-work to make them feel useful, even if it is "killing the planet" (i.e. damaging the biosphere beyond its ability to support our societies.) This is a load of dingo's kidneys. We must see our way past people being fulfilled by their jobs in some sort of ghastly caricature of an artificial protestant work ethic.
You are not righteously, inherently entitled to have things if other people have to suffer for them, or at least not any more entitled than they are to punch you in the face for it. Our social models have to evolve past their idea that you should be able to have whatever you want, whenever you want it like some big spoiled baby who is never told "no".
TL;DR: "no"
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
You know what I just noticed? We don't need you. You are, essentially, superfluous. We only need your money. I think we'll learn a bit from the capitalists and cut the fat. The fat cat, that is.
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
In theory the cost of living will drop as the machines do all the work, resulting in people working a few hours a month being able to pay for everything they need to live. It's not really a matter of companies generously passing on the cost savings, as people with no money won't buy their products otherwise.
You also want the trains walled off and with a roof, or a subway. That eliminates animals/weather/kids as hazards. It also eliminates most of the risk of someone touching the overhead power lines powering the train cars, and putting it underground will free up enough expensive property to pay for the entire system.
putting it underground will free up enough expensive property to pay for the entire system.
Hmm, citation needed. One of the advantages of an elevated system is that you don't have to bury it, and it also doesn't use up much real estate. I question whether you could cost-effectively bury transportation systems under existing cities today, as compared to having to deal with the weather instead which has been relatively well solved by the auto industry already.
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
No offence intended but there are always tricky edge cases. Reality is more complicated than we realize.
The worst edge cases by far are drunk, senile, texting and/or plain old incompetent drivers. Yet we're developing autonomous vehicles that can mix in with those and perform acceptably.
By comparison, it would be a piece of cake to develop a dedicated transport system, allowing only automated traffic, with a safety level that's an order of magnitude better than current public highways.
I'm with drinkypoo, I'd much rather enjoy the fruits of not working and find fulfillment in learning for the sake of it and taking up farming to grow some healthy food and for barter, etc. I would happily stay home and enjoy life rather than slaving for fake money to enrich some already over-rich executives.
Only I can judge you.
Yep. And all they learned from it was to scream louder about social justice.
Eh, the locals aren't breeding that much, it's the immigrants that are keeping America's population growing, both by coming in in the first place and by having more than 2 kids. Stop immigration and our population will level off quickly.
About 40-60% of the Dallas Texas DART light rail system is above grade, except for where it's already on existing railroad grades, or the brief ~1 mile subway section under the dense suburban area just north of downtown. It works really well, there's almost 0 at grade crossings in the most densely populated areas.
moox. for a new generation.
Its not exactly as if progress is new - 150 years ago, a farms harvest used to take hundreds of workers days to accomplish, and those workers went from farm to farm doing harvests in a few short weeks. Millions of workers working across a country. Now, a couple dozen people using machinery do the same work - the social model has already collapsed, many times over, and we have never had a revolt before.
The introduction of weaving machines, spinning jennies etc took the jobs of millions of home workers and replaced them with dozens of factory workers - but that resulted in cheap, quality clothing (have you ever actually worn woolen underwear? Its not nice - but it was all you had until the advent of cheap cotton) and the world moved on.
Thousands of people used to work at a quarry face with hand tools, bringing a few hundred tonnes of product out of the quarry a day. Navvies used to be required in their thousands to dig railway cuttings and embankments. Steam shovels were invented and the jobs disappeared.
So why is this worth new outrage?
Yep, all we need are printing presses or computer number generators, we'll all be rich with all that extra money to spend.
Because they are coming after your job and not someone else's?
So this could be part of the Trump Infrastructure Program? It will put people to work building it until it is built and they have nothing else to do.
I know mining is a tough life but reducing your employees sounds like a lawsuit waiting to happen.
At least they aren't being oxidised.
Let them eat Cake!
[...]the social model has already collapsed, many times over, and we have never had a revolt before.
It came close a few times in England, for example with the Luddites in the 1810s, which also had the Pentrich rising, Ely riots, Spa Fields riots, and the Peterloo massacre. The English parliament of the time certainly feared a revolution, and passed the Six Acts in response. Ten years later saw the Swing Riots, also protesting unemployment following agricultural mechanisation.
It has been going on few hundred years. We better get use to it.
Americans, on average, only spend about 10% of their income on food. I'm impressed that you have become self-sufficient food-wise, but for most people this is a small fraction of their expense. Housing (25%) and healthcare (~20%, depending on how you count) are a larger concern. Your family can eat like an affluent person for $180/week, which is around $10k/year - according to a recent Gallup poll of US families.
W..w..W - Willy Waterloo washes Warren Wiggins who is washing Waldo Woo.
I can't detect sarcasm when people use terms like Trumptards or Killery. No matter which way I guess, I'm often wrong.
There's no time like the present. Well, the past used to be.