Boliden, a front-runner in looking for new technologies
Drones, AI, automation, robotics – there are many fronts to the development, and new ways to go even further surface regularly. Utilisation and the fearless, open-minded adaptation of hot new technologies is not necessarily something that we connect with the mining industry, but the Swedish company Boliden proves otherwise.
The world-class, 5800-employee company, with operations in Sweden, Finland, Norway, and Ireland, has the use of advanced technology at its core and has been a front-runner in looking into new technologies since the early nineties.
Boliden project manager Peter Burman heads different kinds of projects in the company to advance productivity and safety. And as he puts it, there is never one without the other for Boliden.
Furthermore, people are at the centre of all the work – as, at the end of the day, new technology only works if someone uses it, and you always need to take human safety into account.
“When you look at general mine safety, you look at human behaviour. Technology is changing the way we work. In our field, it is supposed to improve safety, but if you use it wrong, it could work the other way around”, Peter says.
“In my work, in addition to researching the possibilities of new technologies, I also use a lot of time to talk to unions and management, and being involved hands-on on-site when new technology is introduced. The people are at the centre – and that’s how you go forward the right way”, he continues.
“If we succeed in bringing technology into mining as we are doing at Boliden, mining as we know it could change quite a lot.”
New ways of working
Boliden has several different technologies in testing and products running at the moment.
One of them is remote controlled scaling. Scaling is the removal of loose rock from the roofs and walls of a mine after blasting, done manually or mechanically. “At Boliden, we take a big machine and hammer the rocks and try to get all the loose rocks to fall down”, Peter says. Safety is a significant factor with scaling, as it needs to be ensured that no loose rocks fall on anyone.
“We wanted to try remote scaling, but no company wanted to build it for us”, Peter adds. “But we decided to try it out anyhow.”
Traditionally with man-operated machines, the controller listens to the big hammer and feels the vibration; the work is largely based on the feeling and intuition of the controller. “However, according to our research, many controllers had music on when doing this work. So we decided to put 3D cameras on the machines, acquired from a blasting company making remote control cameras, but that normally works with much smaller machines.”
“We have the operator 500 metres away from the machine, working with the 3D cameras and remote control. We’ve had more than 70 people coming to look at our setup and prototype in the last couple of months, giving extremely positive feedback when they see it in action”, Peter says.
“We have a strong research perspective on this. If no one wants to build this machine or setup to increase safety, we will then do it. We want to find new, more productive, and clever ways of working, but we have no intention to start building these ourselves or hold onto the IPR – we are more than happy to give the idea away to someone who wants to start producing it – and then we can buy it for our mines”, he concludes.
The wearable hype
There is active, ongoing hype about wearable technology reaching the Boliden mines, too.
“We are successfully experimenting with printable technology, with lightflex, which allows you to print reflective material on clothing. This material will start to glow, the whole surface of it, when we are underground without any lights”, Peter says.
There is also a positioning technology that Boliden is testing, with a wearable ultrawide band. This could work, for example, so that when a person starts to get close to an autonomous machine in the mine, their clothes would start to blink.
“The interesting next step is combining these with the robots’ safety measures. If you have, for example, a robot coming close to a person in the tunnel, recognised by their positioning device, the robot can then get information from the infrastructure.”
“The positioning tool by Mobilaris that we use is also a very important safety measure, whose founders actually received an important mining industry medal for their invention – the first time it was awarded for software”, says Peter.
“When we now have an alarm in the mine, this tool lets us see where people are – they are marked with red and green, depending who is in a safe area and who is not. Operators working in the control immediately see where people are and when everyone is safe.”
“We are also testing a new technology with Ericsson, in which the truck drivers will have a screen showing what vehicles are approaching. As it’s easy to get deadlocks in our mines and the vehicles can’t meet, this would be an important development both for safety and for productivity”, Peter concludes.
“Mine automation today is more than just technology.”
Unforeseen needs
Mine automation today is very complex. It could seem that it’s just technology, but it’s a lot more than that.
Remote controlled machines and autonomous trucks are other things that Boliden is trying out in its mines. Even if these trials work perfectly, there are many things to consider beyond the actual operational success. If these mining robots start to work in close proximity to people, what are the legal implications that need to be considered? As no one has really done it yet, there is no ready legislation, and it is hard to predict these new needs in the existing legislation.
“No one really had the mindset that regulations would need to be applied to autonomous robots”, Peter ponders. “There are wide discussions with authorities about having requirements for remote controlled
or autonomous machines in place, as well as for robots working by themselves among people.”
An industry front-runner
“We are not a big mining company and only have a handful of people working full time on this development. The trick is not to try to do everything yourself, but to steal with pride. Development is sometimes expensive and complicated, but when you look at the what’s going on in the world, we feel that it’s necessary.”
“I live by the philosophy that when I see new technology, I don’t assume it wouldn’t work in mining – I assume that it will until proved otherwise”, Peter asserts.
“We are, for example, using generic communication technology built for the telecommunications business, and actually the electronics do well in mines, as they like the stable +/-1 temperature difference we have”, smiles Peter.
“We have big partners like Volvo, Ericsson, Epirock, ABB, and Telia. When we are cooperating with them and get to access their R&D, we get a huge boost in what we are doing. If we can get Volvo to build a machine for us, the power in that investment is amazing, compared to building it ourselves. We have a great ecosystem around Boliden that is really important for our development and success.”
“Being an early adopter, we work a lot on research and try things, but we would be nothing without our small and large partners. That would be my advice to anyone wanting to do the same thing – build a good cooperation network around you”, Peter says. “In the future, I think insurance companies will also need to be a tighter part of this ecosystem.”
Connectivity and cyber threats
New technologies are coming and will change mining. It is just a matter of whether you adopt them or not.
In addition to machine and wearable technologies, Boliden also works with connectivity. At one of their open pit mines, near Sodankylä in Finland, the wi-fi was not so good, with an airport also nearby. Telia is now building a private 4G network for Boliden; that also has a lot to do with safety.
“When we have a private network, we can move the brain of our telecommunication network from Stockholm to the north, close to the mine. It’s also an important advance from a business interruption point of view. If the network went down in Stockholm, now with the private network, our mine can keep going in the north. We need local survivability to ensure safety and business continuity”, Peter says.
Cyber threats are everywhere today and also affect Boliden and the mining industry. The security risks introduced by 5G networks are something to be considered in the near future, but there are already threats in place now.
“You need to be aware and knowledgeable and conduct a safety and security analysis. For example, even if you have local survivability and you think you are safe, it could, for example, be that your cloud authentication is still in the main network, located somewhere else. This might not be known by the suppliers, so you need to look at all possible sides yourself and own the big picture.”
“We handle explosive with our robots, and we really don’t want someone to hack and take control of them. We have figured this out for now and have good data security in place, but it’s a never-ending fight as the technologies keep on developing”, ponders Peter.
“The cyber threats in our case are always also related to safety and to our people, so we take the fight very seriously.”
Climate change
Adopting the advanced use of technology in mining doesn’t only benefit productivity and safety, but also has a big role in energy-efficiency programmes. The machinery used in mines is large and emits large amounts of diesel fumes.
“Even when we use the best diesel machines on the market, we need to be able to cut the emissions, due to new regulations. We figured, maybe it’s better to remove the diesel machines altogether. We are using Volvo equipment that is hybrid and electric, and it beats the diesel machines big time”, Peter smiles.
“It’s a fun time to be an engineer, and we have quite a lot of cool projects going on at Boliden. In my role as project manager, I get to spend time and money on research, trying new things and pushing Boliden in the right direction.”
“It’s humbling to get to continue this long line of innovative and open-minded work, which started almost 30 years ago. I must be ready to sign off on big risk projects to try new things and also be prepared for failure”, Peter says.
“But if you don’t try, you will never move forward.”