Quarantine Tales: Day 6

One of the benefits of quarantine is that it has given me some much-needed time to collate all the notes I made during my trip and make some sort of sense of what I saw and heard.

For all my excitement about the amazing hardware on display at MINEXPO 2021, my biggest takeaway from the event is that software is rapidly taking over from it as the key to future industry growth and innovation as it strives to boost the efficiency of mining operations and vehicles, improve worker safety, and mitigate the environmental impact of its activities.

Another key benefit of the technology is the potential it has to facilitate driver recruitment and retention by providing a more comfortable working environment well away from the noise, dust, and vibrations of the vehicle cockpit. Real-time training using the data gleaned from the vehicle’s sensors and the cameras tracking the driver’s movements can not only help new recruits get up to speed much faster than traditional methods; it can also help more experienced drivers to stay at the top of their game and enable managers and medical professionals to identify possible physical and mental health issues before they become serious.

The transition to remote and ultimately fully autonomous mining vehicles is still in its early stages but judging by my experiences at MINEXPO the adoption of software, cloud, AI, and related digital transformation technologies by the mining industry is accelerating at an ever-rapid rate. It’s going to be fascinating to see how much progress the industry has made at its next major global event, CONEXPO-CON/AGG 2023.

I just hope that quarantine will no longer be necessary by then…