After a decade of continual learning and progress in developing autonomy within the mining industry through ARDVARC, FLANDERS is celebrating 10 years as a leader in the development of advanced drill-rig control systems. ARDVARC is a premier drill-rig control system offering multiple levels of autonomy for multi-pass, vertical, angle, hammer and rotary drilling applications. By applying ARDVARC technology to an existing OEM drill, customers have seen improvements in safety, productivity, availability, machine life and fragmentation. However, this highly sophisticated technology was just getting its start 10 years ago and the company has taken the opportunity to review the history of development.

In 2006, a large surface mining customer requested repair and troubleshooting of its electric drill motors. It was concluded the shortened motor life was due to the improper control of the motor drive system. FLANDERS proposed a solution to upgrade the drives, resulting in a custom solution providing better overall drill productivity. The upgrade of the drive converted the use of monitoring the RPM (varying levels of drilling speed) to the use of monitoring torque (varying levels of drilling pressure). This upgrade ultimately became a primary feature of FLANDERS’ current ARDVARC One-Touch drill system. This collaboration resulted in 20% increase in productivity for the mining customer.

Based upon the increase in productivity, the following year FLANDERS was engaged to develop autonomous technology for all of the mining company’s drills. Using the ARDVARC One-Touch, the operator simply positioned the machine over the desired drilling target, and with a touch of a button, the machine completed the remainder of the drilling process: levelling the machine, collaring the hole, drilling to desired elevation, retracting the drill string and resetting the jacks in preparation for the next propel cycle. The One-Touch drill control system provided status of the machine, allowing the machine operator to simultaneously evaluate drill functionality and drilling elevation. As a result, the first iteration of the autonomous effort was the completion of the ARDVARC One-Touch drill control system.

In addition to converting the drills from manual operation to a One-Touch drill system, FLANDERS also provided high precision GPS for the operator by integrating the drill’s existing GPS system into a guidance screen for the HMI (Human Machine Interface). When FLANDERS added full data collection and data transport features, it allowed for designed hole pattern information to be wirelessly sent to the drill, eliminating the need for the operator to manually survey each drill location. This provided operator assistance through live onscreen feedback of current location versus the desired location, increasing the positional accuracy. The data collected through the ARDVARC One-Touch system allowed the customer to compare and realise a 22% increase in productivity, compared to manual drilling. By the end of 2008, over a dozen ARDVARC equipped drills were in production in the US and Indonesia.

While the One-Touch drill system functionality was a great first step toward full autonomy, the same customer envisioned this fully autonomous drill as a part of a fully autonomous mine. FLANDERS has always been driven by the need to develop better products and techniques and was up for the challenge. By 2010, FLANDERS engineers had produced their first fully autonomous drilling solution which provided accurate and precise autonomous positioning on the designed blast hole and safety monitoring of the surrounding area for obstacles and hazards using the FLANDERS HazCam 3D imaging system. This breakthrough in automation resulted in up to 30% productivity gain over manual drilling.

By the end of 2013, FLANDERS had deployed seven ARDVARC systems in Australia, two fully autonomous ARDVARCs with special mobile command centers in the US and fully autonomous ARDVARC drills in South Africa and Brazil. Today over 65 ARDVARC installations have been completed with operation in six countries. FLANDERS COO, Allen Patterson notes, “Our approach to doing business is captured with our tagline, ‘Listen. Innovate. Serve.’ Solving customer problems has driven us since the beginning. Our employees are our greatest asset because we’re all of the same mindset – which is to serve and solve problems for our customers.”

The company adds: “The future of ARDVARC will be just as innovative and exciting as the past, if not more. FLANDERS’ long term goal is to completely integrate ARDVARC into a completely autonomous mining operation, in addition to removing the operator from the command centre.”