Louis-Pierre Campeau, an AI expert with Newtrax Technologies was recently interviewed by the company about how he sees his work impacting the mining industry over the next 5-10 years. He was first asked his opinion on how the algorithms he is involved are developing impact safety for the underground mines of the future? “The new reality will make it easier to foresee possible risks and prevent them. Predictive maintenance would be the best example of this,” explained Campeau.
According to the Occupational Safety and Health Administration, companies with a 9% reactive maintenance rate had a recordable incident rate of .1%, while those with a 64% reactive maintenance had a recordable incident rate of 4.3%. These statistics highlight how having reliable equipment is safer. Interpreting real-time data on your equipment and how they interact in the mining environment keeps everyone safer in the mine. These algorithms are preparing today for the future needs of safety compliance in safety and prevention.
On underground mining productivity and profitability and the impact of technology Campeau argued that productivity in mines is lower than in other industries, and that working underground creates a gap of knowledge transfer between supervisors of different areas of the mine in real-time. “Decisions are made while there are still variables which are unknown. Solutions like what Newtrax offers makes it possible to have a global view of situations for better decision making.” He believes that there are serious cost savings when you can make important decisions with a full and clear picture in mind.
Finally on data collection for mining, once mines are collecting data and digitising their systems and fleets, what’s next? “Mines have started digitising their fleets and collecting data. This is where data contextualisation comes in. Through the fleet and network agnostic systems at Newtrax, the data collected can be connected and contextualised. Being able to have the full context of any data will bring more possibilities. Using trends and algorithms trained by multiple mines to predict events in any given mine.”
Newtrax argues that mining will be much more calculated in the next 5 to 10 years, this means knowing exactly what is going on under the surface from to make the mine safer, more profitable and understanding how all of these elements interact with each other to have the most productive operation possible.