Smart, ergonomic and sustainable mining machinery workplaces: An overview of the SmartMiner project

Abstract

Despite being the oldest, the mining industry continues to be a major source of pollution, with more people killed or injured than in all other industries. Additionally, social tension related to this sector is widespread around the world, since mining businesses continue to have a significant negative influence on land, water, air, biota, and people through direct and indirect mechanisms. The mining machinery workplaces, which are in the focus of this study have the largest environmental footprint. The dominance of technology-centered design in present research streams is most likely the explanation for the lack of advancement in the mining industry. The SmartMiner project creates shift from technology-centered design and its concept creates solutions for improving the standard of environmental quality in complex systems and suggests a paradigm change to a Human and Data-Centric Engineering. By aligning advanced operator I4.0&5.0 and society S5.0 standards, the SmartMiner project develops solutions for raising the level of environmental quality in complex interactions between physical, behavioural, and organizational processes field. Proposed paradigm can be easily transferred to other industries. The safety of mining machinery operators in their immediate surroundings and their regular alignment with value chain stakeholders are the first steps in our original idea approval process. Research moves to the operator macro-environment, which is determined by organizational contextual factors, and is encompassed by the development of intelligent, ergonomic, non-invasive, and dependable operator aid systems for regulating physical environment job stressors-noise, human vibration, lighting, temperature, air quality, workplace layout issues, etc., with high potential to solve environmental and human health issues and to influence overall performance.