Inside Rio Tinto’s Robot Mining Control Room


It turns out that blowing giant holes in the Earth to go and dig stuff out of it before carting said stuff onto a boat is actually pretty dangerous for real people. That’s why Rio Tinto has been working to automate the process for the last few years. This is how a team of remote miners controls giant trucks, explosions and diggers from over 1500km away.

Nine News took a painfully-mainstream look inside the control centre last week, and actually revealed some interesting stuff.

The control room is packed with operators who sit in front of banks of screens controlling everything from earthmoving equipment through to giant trucks at a distance of 1500 kilometres from where it’s actually happening.

Rio Tinto’s remote miners are based in Perth Airport, and they control trucks, diggers, loaders and other equipment for 15 different mining operations.

Already, the trucks alone have moved 200 million tonnes of earth with nobody at the wheel.

Next year, Rio is going one step further and making the trains driverless, although, it has tried that before with mixed results.

Check out the video above for more stuff moving by remote.