/ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE
Courtesy of Epiroc
Drilling into the autonomous future of the industry by Maksim Mayer, Editor at Coring Magazine
Artificial Intelligence (AI) offers a convenient solution to the ongoing qualified driller shortage in North America and elsewhere. Almost all of the leading experts Coring Magazine has talked to in the past years foresee automation becoming central to exploration drilling sooner rather than later. But in the current situation, does this panacea to the struggles of the industry seem too good to be true? The autonomous drill rig The emergence of autonomous drill rigs seems obvious given their history. One of the first rigs with a programable logic controller was the Diamec 264 APC. It was introduced in the mid-90s by Craelius, a division of Atlas Copco. The rig had a digital display and rudimentary automation functions. A decade later, in the 2000s, the drill rigs with computerized controls appeared. One of the first such examples was the Diamec U6 APC. Over the next years, manufacturers made huge leaps in improving the performance and responsiveness of the controls. Around 2015, Epiroc integrated the Rod Handling Systems, a technology already known to the industry, to the control panels, allowing for more complete automation of tasks, and thus increasing safety. Three years later, data logging from the rig became an option as well as automatic functions, such as auto-drilling and rod running, improving drilling and operations further. Coring Magazine has covered this progression throughout the years. Some examples include the Epiroc’s Diamec Smart line of drills - perhaps the most well-known (reviewed all the way back in Issue 1). Another is Comacchio’s CX line (see Issue 15) offering remote control via radio signal and their innovative ComNect™ telemetry system, which gives users real-time equipment status. 30
There is a plethora of other solutions from manufacturers and many contractors have also developed their own customized rigs with additional AI functionalities. Drillers have been reaping increasing benefits from these features over the years. Now several manufacturers have taken this even further, creating fully autonomous exploration drill rigs and even more companies are slated to present their solutions within the next months and years. The promises are lofty: the autonomous systems would be able to control drilling with infinite precision, their improved telemetry would help making complex decisions almost instantaneously without human input, and all data and performance information would be available immediately for analysis and adjustment. Significantly less risk for the workforce and reduced downtime are just the most obvious advantages autonomous drill rigs could bring. Avoiding the costly human errors equals lower costs to repairs, while also generating higher quality core samples – the very thing clients care about. The examples from the automation of the Mining industry seem to indicate that these rich promises are possible to reap. In 2018, Rio Tinto has reported that their autonomous haul trucks have reduced hauling costs by 15% and on average, each vehicle has operated 700 hours more than their manned counterparts. Another example is the Garpenberg mine in Sweden – the oldest in the country that is still in use. With the help of Coring Magazine #17
