Impact of Wearable Technology on Mining

Metals and Mining Review | Thursday, January 09, 2025

Enhancing safety is the central concern for mining companies, and the application of wearables in the industry reflects this.

FREMONT, CA: A range of wearable tech devices can help improve safety, but the chief method is adding sensors. Whether integrated through smart helmets, smart jackets or body suits, or wearable sensors, the capacity to measure different internal and external health risks can be invaluable for mining companies.

Impact of Wearable Tech

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Following is the impact of wearable tech on the wearable industry, as identified by GlobalData.

Workforce safety and injury prevention

Decreasing workplace injuries is one of the most significant aspects of wearable technology. For example, in mines, a worker can be exposed to the risk of injury due to hazardous terrain or working around heavy machinery. Wearable technologies can assess workers' health and wellbeing and give essential support and assistance whenever required.

The US company Guardhat has cultivated a smart helmet that, alongside functioning as a traditional hard hat, features sensors that can discover workers' safety in their surroundings and communicates with supervisors and a centralized monitoring system in case of an accident.

Real-time monitoring and inspection

A major aspect of wearable technology is maintaining equipment and inspecting failure signs to minimize downtime. The failure of great equipment may cost millions to a company, considering production downtime and repair/replacement expenses. In crucial issues, technicians require an expert's help; but bringing masters from onshore offices to offshore mines located thousands of miles away raises the overall expenses. It also drags the time for the inspection and repair of the equipment.

Wearable technologies like smart glasses or smart helmets can reduce the time and cost of inspection and repairing equipment. In addition, using wireless connectivity, the field engineer can receive expert guidance on a real-time basis, thus reducing the need to have an expert available on site at all times.

Resource tracking

Wearable technology can be utilized to track the employees during work efficiently. Wireless and location-based technologies let the device transmit a worker's real-time position to an onshore monitoring center.

The company K4 Integration, for instance, incorporates radio-frequency identification (RFID) tags into individualized hard hats for every worker, providing mine supervisors with real-time information about the workers' location and the mine state.

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