Dredge Robotics is leading the way for technological advancements in the dredging sector, which has generated significant interest in the Australian mining industry.
Implementing advanced technologies in heavy industries typically comes with a higher price tag, and this often results in operators opting for less efficient traditional methods to alleviate costs.
However, the time almost invariably comes when a tech company develops a solution to the point that it is not only safer and more efficient, but equally if not more competitive from a price perspective.
Dredge Robotics has been working on its liner-safe dredging solution for several years, with its robots now reaching that elusive point where they are consistently delivering better outcomes than traditional barged dredging methods in a shorter space of time.
And the cost-effectiveness of the robots is constantly improving because, as technology improves, Dredge is continually increasing the rate of material that can be removed.
According to Dredge Robotics chief executive officer Antony Old, the throughput of the company’s liner-safe robots has doubled in the last 15 months, which has had an “incredible impact on the cost per unit cube” of dredged material.
“This means we’ve crossed that threshold now of being more affordable as an option for a lot of industries where previously we might have been 20 to 30 per cent more expensive than a barge dredging option,” he told Australian Mining.
Old explained the attributes of the liner-safe dredging pond.
“With our robots, you can dredge back to bare liner safely,” Old said. “There’s no human entry and no barges, and it always removes 100 per cent of the material, so it’s reliable. It’s an all-around easier way to dredge lined ponds.”
With traditional methods, mining operators are forced to take lined ponds offline before they can safely complete their dredging. This prolongs dredging projects and impacts mining operations, with revenue lost from stalled upstream assets and processing plants.
Image: Dredge Robotics
“If you drain a lined pond, or try and do it with suck trucks, you’ve got to take the whole operation offline,” Old said. “If you try and dig a lined pond out with a digger, you risk damaging the liner, and if you throw a barge in there, you risk damaging the liner as well.
“Our liner-safe dredging robots avoid all of those eventualities, so they tick every box.”
One of the big bug bears of traditional lined-pond dredging methods has always been the lack of data generated from a day’s work, especially when it can be difficult to see what sediment has and hasn’t been removed with the naked eye.
Dredge Robotics has addressed this quandary with its real-time monitoring solution.
“The robot will tell you at any time how much material is being removed, what it weighs, and graph it for you,” Old said. “This can be exported into a PDF or Excel spreadsheet and automatically emailed to the client, providing an update on the progress from each dredging day.
“With a daily report, there’s no confusion around the progress we’ve made, and it also helps to demonstrate the tonnages we can deliver. This is valuable information as we look to further prove our solution to the mining sector.”
As Dredge continues to evolve its fleet, the company is redesigning the brain of its robot, harnessing artificial intelligence (AI) and machine learning in the process.
“We’re upgrading our robots to be AI-capable and have machine-learning capability, so we can give them a relatively small sample set to learn off and then they will teach themselves on the job to do whatever task you want to train them to do autonomously,” Old said.
Dredge Robotics is set to roll out this advancement in clear-water dredging to start, with further proof of the solution to pave the way for deployment into other dredging applications.
Dredge Robotics was recently selected by Invest and Trade WA, a government body that fosters investment in Western Australian businesses, to join a delegation of companies at MINExpo, which took place in Las Vegas in September.
Alongside its time at the exhibition, where Dredge was able to meet new clients and understand more of the opportunities available in the US and beyond, the company also engaged some of the largest miners in Nevada and visited their mine sites.
A Tier 1 miner showed particular interest in Dredge’s exotic liquor dredging solution, with another visit in the pipeline to solidify the relationship.
This feature appeared in the October 2024 issue of Australian Mining.
