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ROBOMINERS/UNEXMIN Joint Workshop, Amsterdam

Luís Lopes, responsible for Communication and dissemination in UNEXMIN and for Roadmapping in ROBOMINERS, went from the LPRC side to a joint workshop that brough together three projects to discuss and share ideas on development. PIPEBOTS joined the two above mentioned projects.

Talks and discussions on robotics-related topics made the core of the debate. The specific areas of discussion worked around: 1) Robotics, 2) Sensing, 3) SLAM/Navigation and 4) Communications.

LPRC took this opportunity to give a first step in the ROBOMINERS roadmapping process. One of the main tasks of roadmapping is to create clusters with other ongoing projects. This was achieved by sharing information on ROBOMINERS and collecting information on the other two projects. A follow-up will be next step and the aim is to share information on common challenges and possible approaches.

RoboMiners Kick-off meeting, Madrid

The 13th and 14th of June the Politechnical University of Madrid hosted the kick-off meeting of the newly started Robominers project.

ROBOMINERS will develop a bio-inspired, modular and reconfigurable robot-miner for small and difficult to access deposits and presents a solution for reopening many of Europe’s abandoned underground mines, without the need for a full recommissioning and in particular without the need for dewatering the mine. Under this application scenario it will be possible to resume mining exactly where it was abandoned in the past, which may have been several hundreds of years ago, turn the mine into a profitable business and produce sufficient revenues to cover the costs of a full-scale remediation of any environmental pollution from the past.

The consortium is formed by 14 outstanding members with the coordination of the Politechnical University of Madrid and includes the University of Tampere, University of Miskolc, University of Leoben, the European Federation of Geologists, the Belgian Royal Institute of Natural Sciences, Assimagra, the Geological Survey of Slovenia, Resources Computing International, GeoMontan, the Tallin University of Technology, the Mineral and Energy Economic Research Institute of Poland, K-Utec and, of course, La Palma Research.

During the kick-off meeting the novel idea of a bio-inspired resilient mining robot was discussed and the concept of the project was defined amongst all members.

LPRC lead Work Package 8, Active roadmapping & clusters and collaborates in almost all other Work Packages, but most actively in Work Package 10 Dissemination and Outreach.

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