Technology developed by Joshua Marshall and his team promises to improve mining safety.

A new piece of mining technology developed by Joshua Marshall (Robert M. Buchan Department of Mining) and his Mining Systems Laboratory has positioned the Queen’s researchers as leaders in the field of mining robotics.

The technology automates the process of loading the bucket of an underground load haul dump (LHD) vehicle with fragmented rock – making the process safer and more productive.

“Most underground LHD vehicles of this type have a manual operator because there was no truly effective solution to the problem of how to automatically fill the bucket. We believe that we are the first to develop a commercially-viable technology to address this problem,” Dr. Marshall says. “Because it’s automated, the machine does the same thing over and over, consistently delivering bigger payloads in a shorter time.”

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Andrew Dobson