I recently had beers with a friend in the oil sands who drives one of those massive trucks (biggest in the world) in the mines that carry oil sand to be extracted/refined. They introduced autonomous trucks at his mine that are operated from a control room and things haven’t gone as smoothly as predicted. My buddy didn’t seem to worried about it, the self driving trucks have messed up a lot and the company isn’t using them much, it’s been costly.
Automation is definitely a consideration though and something that guys should be aware of and prepare for. In my trade some of our welding inspection techniques have gone automated, they can do a lot more than a tech doing it manually. Fortunately my union pays for and provides courses for us to become certified in the advanced/automated techniques, they fly guys to Edmonton from the UK to put on these courses.
Here’s a video of guys doing automated ultrasonic testing on a big inch pipeline, the guy with the specialized course sits in a warm truck analyzing the data that the machine takes as it scans the weld for defects:
Automation is definitely a consideration though and something that guys should be aware of and prepare for. In my trade some of our welding inspection techniques have gone automated, they can do a lot more than a tech doing it manually. Fortunately my union pays for and provides courses for us to become certified in the advanced/automated techniques, they fly guys to Edmonton from the UK to put on these courses.
Here’s a video of guys doing automated ultrasonic testing on a big inch pipeline, the guy with the specialized course sits in a warm truck analyzing the data that the machine takes as it scans the weld for defects: