AGVs have the potential to take South Africa’s mining and materials handling sectors to new heights by providing many benefits to safety as well as lowering operating costs which we will discuss below. Automated guided vehicles or AGVs are autonomous vehicles that can be programmed or directed to perform specific tasks. These vehicles can range from small to large depending on their intended use. In this article, we will focus on the main benefits of these vehicles in South Africa’s mining and materials handling sector.
The wide variety of AGVs
Numerous types of AGVs specialise in specific jobs for example towing AGVs are designed to carry smaller unpowered vehicles behind them such as carts containing raw materials which cannot move on their own. In contrast heavy load AGVs are designed to carry large amounts of items or a few very heavy items.
Another useful AGV is the unit load AGV which primarily specialises in unloading and loading materials as well as transporting these materials from point A to point B. They do not require human intervention and excel at performing repetitive unloading and reloading tasks that would otherwise require a human operator.
Benefits to the mining sector
The mining sector has the potential to benefit from the implementation of AGVs. We can already see AGVs specifically designed to assist in the mining sector such as in the mine navigation section of the industry.
Mapping mines before entry.
In this example, we see that an AGV with lasers are used to map various underground routes before humans enter the area. The AGV can then be used to define areas that are safe to move through, as well as areas that may be blocked or hazardous.
AGVs can also operate in potentially dangerous areas of mines such as abandoned mines which are revisited for new potential mining opportunities. These mines may not have been inspected for many years and as such having an AGV inspect and/or map the area for potential dangers would be a huge advantage to the safety of miners entering the area at a later date.
Transportation from mines
The actual transportation of raw materials from within mines could also be done via AGVs, as there is great potential for a particular type of AGV known as a heavy burden AGV or heavy load AGV to do this job effectively as their maximum load capacity is around 125 tons depending on the AGV. This would make them suitable to transport enormous quantities of raw materials from mines automatically.
Lower operational costs
This benefit comes in the form of lower operational costs for example, the transportation of goods from the mine to the surface may no longer require as many trained drivers as it usually would to manually transport raw material from the source mine. Instead, AGVs can take over this task as they thrive in repetitive tasks in the form of moving materials from one place to another. The main benefit from a cost perspective here is the fact that this would require fewer human transportation drivers to perform these tasks and thus fewer people who need to be paid to perform these jobs manually.
Safety advantages
In the previous section, we briefly talked about the advantages AGVs have, specifically the fact that you can send them into potentially hazardous environments with minimal risk to human life, however, AGVs are also useful in the transportation of goods which pose a potential threat to the health and safety of workers.
As it so happens South Africa is the world’s 11th largest producer of uranium ore which is known to be dangerous to humans depending on the purity and concentration of the ore. Mining and transporting such items using AGVs allows us to ensure minimal long-term risks to both the actual drivers and the miners themselves as we effectively lesson the contact time between these elements and the workers.
Supply chain efficiency
Not only do AGVs provide benefits in both safety and transportation when handling raw materials, but they also have the advantage of being able to operate practically 24/7. This is important because they can continue to work hours after that an employee cannot without rest, effectively making sure materials can get to their destinations reliably with greater consistency and less room for error, however, the main limiting factor is the battery life of the AGV in question.
Final thoughts.
If implemented correctly, AGVs can improve many areas of the mining and materials handling sector, including safety, transportation, operational costs, and efficiency. While there are concerns about how this would affect jobs in South Africa if AGVs are used more so as a tool to assist workers rather than an active replacement they could contribute to a quality-of-life improvement for workers that will no longer have to do repetitive tasks and a business improvement for employers wanting to lower operational costs and increase on-site safety.