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Roboter Julius in für Menschen gesperrten Bereich des Bergwerkss

Autonomous Robots in Mining

Autonomous mobile robots have been successfully applied in a variety of domains such as households (vacuum cleaning & lawn mowing robots), streets (autonomous cars), the deep sea (autonomous underwater vehicles), air space (unmanned drones), and even outer space (e.g. Mars rover). Since 2014, we have been exploring a further frontier for autonomous robots: underground mines.

Reasons for robots going underground are plenty. Heat and humidity make underground mines a strenuous work environment for humans, especially as future mines will become increasingly deeper and, thus, hotter. In such environments, robots can also help to reduce mining costs, as expensive air conditioning is unnecessary when no humans are present. Another concern is safety. In disaster cases, rescue robots could help finding missing personnel. Unmanned mines operated by robots alone would not endanger human lives at all. 

Starting in fall 2014, Mining-RoX project has focused on information gathering robots. The goal was the creation of mobile robot technology to facilitate the autonomous exploration of underground mines, while providing detailed 3D scans and monitoring environmental conditions, such as air and water quality.  Mining-RoX  is part of the RoX (Robots in saXony) initiative, a cooperation of several universities in the state of Saxony, supported by the SMWK, Saxony's Ministry for Sciences and Arts.

Since summer 2017, work from Mining-RoX has been continued in the ARIDuA project. Here, we investigate how mobile robots can be used to set up temporary sensor networks and data communication infrastructure in underground environments.

The basic research on mining robotics has been further elaborated in joint projects with industry and international academic partners under the umbrella of the EIT-RM (European Institute of Technology – Raw Materials). The iDeepMon projects developed 3d scanning technology of mine shaft inspection and the Undromeda project explored uses cases of wheeled robots towards of goal of "invisible, zero-impact, intelligent, safe and fully autonomous" mines.

The TU Bergakademie Freiberg is the world's oldest university of mining. As Europe's only university operating a research and teaching mine, it is a unique location for pioneering research on autonomous robots in underground mining.

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