Remote Vehicles in Mining

This workshop gathered the relevant scientific community presenting the state of the art of Remote Vehicles (RVs) in mining and reflecting on the current needs and obstacles for its use. RVs in mining have seen an increased attention in the last years due to the rapid development in robotosation, miniaturisation and software technologies.

Under the moderation of Jacki Davis, the meeting opened with the welcome of the organizing units of this event: Patrick Kolar and Arnoldas Milukas for Department B ‘LIFE and H2020 Energy, Environment, Resource’ of EASME; and Andrea Gentili for D3 ‘Low Emission Future Industry’ of DG RTD.

The Workshop presented the RVs in mining projects funded under H2020 Societal Challenge 5 in Raw Materials calls as well as under the Research Fund for Coal & Steel (RFCS) Programme; The event was structured in three sessions, following the three main areas of application of the RVs in mining.

The first session was dedicated to Exploration and five projects on were presented; UNEXMIN, ROBUST, INFACT, AMKO and SIMS.

The second session was dedicated to Safety-related Monitoring and  four projects were presented :INDIRES, SLOPES, STAMS, TeleRescuer.

The third session focused on Extraction, which was addressed by three projects: VAMOS, Blue Nodules and Robominiers.

The event closed with a panel discussion about the current needs and obstacles to the development of Remote Vehicles in Mining.

The workshop provided a good opportunity to take stock of recent research results in the field, to explore possible synergies among the different areas and to take inspiration for the planning of potential future applications of RVs in mining environments.

For more information, please contact:

• Raw-Materials@ec.europa.eu (EASME)
• rtd-steel-coal@ec.europa.eu (DG RTD)