Program Leader
Professor Ross McAree
Dr Zane Smith
Contact Details
Please direct all enquiries here.
Mining Shovel Semi Automation This aims to provide operator assists that improve truck-shovel operations. The benefits of the project span safety, availability, productivity, and maintenance. The project is developing, inter alia, a layer-of-protection capability that prevents metal-on-metal collision that might injure truck drivers and damage trucks and an automated loading capability that reduces the cycle time, lowers machine duty through smoother operation, and reduces the workload on operators.
Minimal perception requirements to support effective remote control of bulldozers This project aims to understand and define operator perception requirements for effective remote operation of bulldozers on coal stockpiles and determine how the feedback information to meet these needs can be optimized to fit within the capacity of contemporary wireless communication channels.
Real-time receding horizon mission planning for automated excavation The aim of this research is to develop algorithms and techniques for generating optimal excavation plans for diggers. This is seen as a key step towards the generation of mission plans for automated diggers.
Perception sensor capabilities This project aims to establish a formal framework for evaluating sensors against requirements relevant to typical mining automation applications. A selection of candidate sensors is being evaluated, including: an Indurad radar; Velodyne HDL 64E high-definition LIDAR, SICK LD-MRS, SICK LRS3100 and SICK LMS511 scanning LIDARs and XIMEA RL13C cameras.
Mining Automation Reference Architecture The motivation for this project is the compelling need for of a common plan for bringing disparate mining technology together to form a compatible and effective mine-wide automation solution. We call this common plan the Mining Automation Reference Architecture (MARA) and it broadly seeks to capture the essence of existing architectures, and the vision of future needs and evolution to provide guidance to assist in developing new system architectures.