Automated mineral sensing for robotic miners: the ROBOMINERS perception payload

ROBOMINERS (Bio-Inspired, Modular and Reconfigurable Robot Miners, Grant Agreement No. 820971, http://www.robominers.eu) was a European project funded by the European Commission's Horizon 2020 Framework Programme. The project aimed to test and demonstrate new mining and sensing technologies on a small robot-miner prototype (~1-2T) designed to target unconventional and uneconomical mineral deposits (technology readiness level 4 to 5).

As part of the ROBOMINERS sensors payload development, a set of mineralogical and geophysical sensors were designed to provide the necessary data to achieve “selective mining”, the ability to reduce mining waste production and to increase productivity of small mining machines. The robot should have the ability to react and adapt in real time to geological changes as it progresses through a mineralized body. The perception payload technologies demonstrated in the project are based on reflectance/fluorescence spectroscopy, laser-induced breakdown spectroscopy and Electrical Resistivity Tomography.

The field trials of the sensors have been carried out in the entrance of abandoned mine (baryte and lead mine, Ave-et-Auffe, Belgium), as well as in an open pit mine (bituminous shales mine in Kunda, Estonia) and in an underground lead mine (Mezica, Slovenia). These tests allowed to demonstrate the effectiveness of these sensors to provide realtime to sub-realtime mineralogical and geophysical data to a robotic drilling platform, paving the way for more autonomy in robotized mining machines.