Adaptive Automation for Face Drilling

The main objective of this project is to develop automation solutions for key aspects of the underground drilling process. More effective and safer underground mining has important environmental, societal, and economic impacts. Thus, to meet the future challenges of mining at ever-greater depths, it is imperative to strive for a greater degree of automation and teleoperation of mining equipment. The project will take a crucial step towards the complete automation of underground mining by enabling the integration of results from several ongoing projects currently driven by the consortium members. The underground drilling rig simulator developed will be a tool to significantly speed up the development and verification cycles for all components and functions developed and implemented in the project. The components designed and developed within this project will then aim at automating the full drilling cycle: starting with a scanning and interpretation of the environment, through the generation and adaptation of a drill plan, to the final plan execution and monitoring. The project will drive and implement technology components in a fully automated drilling cycle and by that contribute to the long-term goal of a fully automated mine without human presence in production areas. The project consortium consist of stakeholders from research to end customer, ensuring the relevance of results produced and capacity of implementation of results.