Nowadays, intelligent equipment research and development technology continues to advance, but it has never been able to fully mine coal mines with robots. Manual labor is still the mainstream method of underground operations.
Many people wonder why advanced equipment is not used. There are multiple practical obstacles behind it.
The cost of the equipment itself is at a high level. The cost of manufacturing a mining robot far exceeds the salary of daily hired workers.
After the equipment is put into use, funds will continue to be invested in daily maintenance, parts replacement, and regular maintenance.
After overall accounting, it is difficult for enterprises to bear the cost of large-scale replacement of equipment, and the economic benefits cannot meet the expected standards.
Taking a medium-sized coal mining company as an example, if the existing manual mining mode is to be completely replaced by robot mining, the initial equipment purchase cost may be as high as tens of millions of yuan, which is an unbearable expense for many companies.
Moreover, subsequent maintenance costs cannot be underestimated. Millions of yuan may be needed every year to ensure the normal operation of the equipment.
The environmental conditions of underground operations also bring considerable challenges to the operation of intelligent equipment.
The light inside the mine tunnel is dim, the ground is bumpy, and the rock structure may change at any time.
The robot’s fixed operating program cannot flexibly respond to emergencies, and it is difficult for the equipment to accurately complete precise mining operations.
For example, when encountering sudden collapse of rock formations or gas leaks, it is difficult for robots to respond as quickly as humans and take effective countermeasures.
Large-scale use of mechanical operations will also involve a large number of labor placement issues.
There are a huge number of people engaged in mining-related work in the country. Once machines completely replace labor, a large number of practitioners will lose their livelihood positions.
Problems related to employment placement cannot be solved within a short period of time.
This will not only affect the lives of these practitioners and their families, but may also have a certain impact on social stability.
At the same time, various safety hazards are hidden in mine operations, and accidents such as gas leakage and rock collapse occur from time to time.
The existing robot protection performance is insufficient to cope with complex and dangerous working conditions, and cannot fully guarantee the stable development of mining work.
Although robots can reduce human exposure to dangerous environments to a certain extent, their protective capabilities and response capabilities are still limited when facing some extreme situations.
Considering various factors such as cost, environment, employment and safety, robots can only assist in completing simple tasks for the time being.
If we want to completely replace manpower in mining operations, we still need to overcome many technical difficulties, and it will be difficult to achieve full popularization in a short time.
In the future, with the continuous development and advancement of technology, perhaps one day mining robots can truly completely replace manual operations, but for now, this is still a distant goal.
