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ABSTRACT
The incorporation of autonomous equipment is fuelling a revolution in mining, but it poses operational challenges due to potential hazardous interactions between humans and the autonomous machinery. For this reason, block and panel caving mines operate under a static confinement policy that stops all autonomous LHDs when workers must enter the production area, thus having a huge negative impact on productivity. To address this challenge, we propose two dynamic confinement policies, and we model them using discrete event simulation. Results show that the dynamic moderate/intensive policies may lead to increases in production of 35%/45% when compared with the static policy.
Disclosure statement
No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).
Additional information
Funding
The work was supported by the Agencia Nacional de Investigación y Desarrollo [PIA Project AFB180004].