SALT LAKE CITY, UTAH – Mariana Minerals has announced the strategic deployment of Boston Dynamics’ renowned quadruped robot, Spot®, at its Copper One facility in Utah, USA. This initiative marks a significant step in the company’s commitment to a
“software first” approach, aiming to integrate advanced sensor solutions into its operational framework for more informed decision-making and enhanced efficiency.
Lukas Fahle, Mariana Minerals’ Mining Autonomy Lead, emphasized the company’s vision: “We are very much focused on ‘software first,’ looking to bring sensor solutions that are deployed in the field into our software framework to eventually act on that data for more informed decision making.”
The Copper One facility is engaged in a comprehensive process of extracting ore from a sedimentary hosted orebody. This involves crushing the ore, placing it on a leach pad, extracting copper, and ultimately refining it into 99% pure copper cathode for sale to customers.
Spot’s primary role at Copper One will be to automate routine inspections and data capture, thereby reducing the physical strain on field operators. Fahle recounted his initial encounter with Spot: “I first heard about Spot when I was in college actually getting my PhD. I was working on LiDAR scanning solutions in underground mines and pretty quickly came across Spot as a robotic solution that would be able to carry that payload and collect that data.”
He further elaborated on the immediate benefits: “I think the primary application when we start out is going to be doing inspections across the plant that currently take quite a bit of time of our operators to walk the plant. What we really hope to do is relieve those operators of these fairly tedious tasks and help them get more time back to do more value add tasks.”
Looking ahead, Fahle expressed enthusiasm for the unforeseen applications that will emerge once Spot is fully integrated into the daily operations. “Once Spot is fully deployed, I’m really most excited about all the use cases that our teams, our operators can identify on-site that we haven’t even really thought about yet. The teams that do these jobs every single day, they will see exactly what Spot could be good at and great at. They will give us a lot of ideas that we can then utilise and figure out what are the most value add use cases.” This forward-thinking approach underscores Mariana Minerals’ commitment to leveraging cutting-edge technology to empower its workforce and optimize its mining processes.
