Review of IT enabled technologies in Indian mining industry for improved productivity & safety

Abstract

In India, mining industry lacks technological innovation and the mining companies constantly striving to implement latest, reliable and cost effective automation technologies for their mines, to ensure high productivity and safety. Productivity of mines sometimes can be increased just by incorporating simple modifications in variables of the mine activities and operations which also boost up the safety conditions. Recent advancement in the technology especially with the application of Information Technology, it is now possible to identify the variables for improving existing production of mine with reduced operational cost, ensuring higher level of safety to the miners as well. Radio-frequency identification (RFID) technology is an effective tool to ensure safety in mining operations as it offers a real time tracking system during blasting and has the potential to revolutionise the mining operations. Radar technology has been widely popular for several decades globally, and can be a best tool to avert the hazards due to ground movement in surface mining. Field oriented training is of great importance in mining and realising that there is no substitute to the real life training, the mining sectors now-days tends to use different software to shorten the training time with ensuring the high quality of training. Virtual reality has the potential to cater the need of quality training with real time simulations of field conditions to the miners. This paper presents the application and need of RFID, radar based systems and virtual reality system in mining industry and presents a framework for future research areas.