Impact of mine networking and machine - IT on future mine production

摘要

Since 1998 LKAB in it's underground iron ore mines in Kiruna and Malmberget is performing a remote controlled production drilling using partly autonomous drill rigs. To develop the process control and optimize the usage of rigdata and enhanced reporting, LKAB, Embigence and Atlas Copco have interfaced a new system to the existing PLC on the production drill rig: The system consists of an embedded computer ("Machine-Server") attached to Wireless LAN to acquire database ready "information" from the rig to backbone network. The information is prepared in the new "International Rock Excavation Data Exchange Standard" (IREDES). Beside reporting, online web browser based access is possible as well as online video streaming from the CCTV cameras on the rig. This new conceptual approach in data utilization in mining moves the main task of information processing from central systems to the point where the information is originating: The machine itself is the server.