It is a very good question where we are going into the future with mining.Lets have a look how it's gonna be......
By the way,I'm not going to talk about how to mine a crypto coin....No no,I'm talking about the real stuff they dig out of the ground and make some real stuff- Iron ore for this instance.
They are big ain't they????Guess what,no humans in there.....
In the next picture I show you how big they are....it is my working mate,standing in front of such a monster...
But that's not all,nowadays they are all driving around the mine with no one in it....yes you read it right....no humans in there...
Scary stuff,if you look at the size of them....
I always nearly pissed my pants all the time,crossing a road when I had to do ,while I was working in the mines...doesnt matter anyway, with or without a human in it....
This picture is taken in Newman.... a famous mining town.
No driver in this monster trucks,so how does it work????
The operation center is in Perth,around a 1000 km away,state of the art facility.They operate everything from there and it is a 24-7 operation,365 days a year.....
I'm not sure how far they are with the trains,they were big rumors around......and drilling is remote too.
Automation,AI and so on,it looks as in the long run,it's cheaper to run the business without any human where they can.....
Humans just make errors and cost to much..
Welcome to the future....of mining....Rio Tinto and BHP are the leaders...
I hope you get a bit of a better understanding how things work today and in the future....
Thanks for taking the time
Urs
More Infos here:
http://www.riotinto.com/australia/pilbara/mine-of-the-future-9603.aspx
http://www.smh.com.au/business/bhp-happy-to-trail-rio-in-driverless-road-and-rail-20140707-3biy0.html