Visualizing Depth: Computational Ecology & Remote Control in the Digital Mine

Keywords: digital geography, political ecology, mining, extraction, robots
Session Type: Virtual Paper Abstract
Day: Tuesday
Session Start / End Time: 3/1/2022 03:40 PM (Eastern Time (US & Canada)) - 3/1/2022 05:00 PM (Eastern Time (US & Canada))
Room: Virtual 14

Abstract

In the iron-rich Pilbara region of Western Australia, Rio Tinto’s Mine of the Future™ integrates complex constellations of networked sensing systems and autonomous robots to ‘paint a picture’ of the underground delivered in ‘real time’ to miners operating thousands of kilometers away from the mine site in virtual-reality enabled remote operation centers (ROCs). The displacement of human sensing systems from the lithic spaces of the mine to remote hyperreal simulation environments imbricate more traditional and nascent technologies to create remote haptic sites of experience, where sensory receptors in human skin, neural signals derived from motor commands, and digital sensors embedded in the physical mine produce new ways of visualizing, knowing and being in relation to subsurface spaces and geologic matter. Artificial intelligence and machine learning algorithms are enrolled to process ‘big data’ streams flowing from mines to generate orebody models, organize equipment movement, and predict and control blasts, reducing decision-time to microseconds. The drive to reproduce the subsurface via digitally simulated, immersive technologies is leading to new ontological and epistemological encounters via enactments and re-enactments of extraction-related events that enable seeing and knowing the mine from multiple, different perspectives and vantage points. This research expands understanding of how the emergence and deployment of virtual interfaces, equipped with haptic capabilities, bridge temporal and spatial displacements between human touch and perception and the remote geologic targets of the smart mine, co-producing new ways of visualizing and articulating subsurface spaces at increasing depths.