About Longwall Automation Steering Committee

History
Team members

The seven year Landmark Longwall Automation project was overseen and closely monitored by the Longwall Automation Steering Committee (LASC), comprising ACARP and leading longwall industry representatives. LASC provided valuable input and direction which greatly contributed to the success of the project.

The vision of the Longwall Automation Steering Committee (LASC) was to develop a longwall face that would operate automatically within pre-defined parameters to:

enhance health and safety
production consistency
to lower operating costs
improve return on capital.

The term LASC has now been applied to the technology outcomes of the project (LASC Technology) that are now being commercialised through the major longwall Original Equipment Manufacturers (OEMs). The CSIRO Mine Automation team continues to play a vital role in supporting the OEMs through this LASC commercialisation and technology transfer phase.

LASC History

The seven year longwall automation landmark project was an initiative of the Australian Coal Association (ACA) through the Australian Coal Association Research Program ACARP and began in July 2001. The project was undertaken by CSIRO Exploration & Mining and the Cooperative Research Centre for Mining Equipment and Technology CMTE and had the support of the major longwall equipment manufacturers.

Sustained full-face automation in all conditions, with its health, safety and productivity benefits has been an industry goal for many years. However, this is not an easy goal to achieve. Not only does a hands-on operator control the longwall equipment, he also observes and deals with the aggressive, unstable and hazardous face environment. While significant progress towards longwall automation has been made, many challenges remain in the development of all the sensors and automation technologies needed to fully replace operators on the face.

With these realities in mind, the vision of the longwall automation project was to develop face equipment that would reliably carry out the routine functions of cutting and loading coal, maintaining face geometry and manipulating roof supports without human intervention. Operators, either working remote from the face, or on the face in an observation and monitoring role, set the operating boundaries for the automated equipment and deal with exception conditions such as equipment breakage and face guttering.

In a staged approach over a total of eight years, the project delivered a stream of outcomes beginning in the eighth year with the solution to high-priority industry problems including face alignment, open communications between longwall system components and longwall equipment reliability issues.

Throughout the remainder of the project, additional sensor algorithms and monitoring technologies were developed to suppliment and replace human observation.

Key CSIRO Team Members

David Hainsworth
David Reid
Jonathon Ralston
Chad Hargrave
Ron McPhee
Con Caris

	David Hainsworth Program Leader, Mining Science and Engineering Research CSIRO Exploration & Mining His research interests include: automation for longwall coal mining sensor development for underground navigation.
	David Reid Principal Research Engineer CSIRO Exploration & Mining His research interests include: inertial navigation for machine guidance control and information systems in coal mining applications automation of highwall and longwall mining processes.
	Jonathon Ralston Principal Research Engineer CSIRO Exploration & Mining His research interests include: embedded real-time computing data fusion signal processing navigation teleoperation visualisation information systems communications for the control and automation of mining equipment and processes.
	Chad Hargrave Senior Research Engineer CSIRO Exploration & Mining Chad is currently working on a variety of projects in the Mining Automation field including: longwall automation laser scanning sensing communications mining technology.
	Ron McPhee Senior Research Engineer CSIRO Exploration & Mining His research interests include: intrinsic safety geotechnical instrumentation novel sensing and communications techniques for application in the broader mining environment
	Con Caris Research Consultant CSIRO Exploration & Mining His main areas of research are: 3D visualisation for telerobotics and mine automation Immersive environments Human-System integration Sensor development