Tag: robotics

Field measurements as part of the AMICOS and VOT3D projects!

This week the DMC team performed field measurements in the scope of AMICOS and VOT3D EIT Raw Materials projects. The trials took place in the underground tunnels of the “Rzeczka” complex (named after a nearby village) in Walim, Lower Silesia. The site is one of 7 former Nazi underground facilities in the Owl Mountains, constituting an unfinished massive underground construction project “Riese” (“giant” in German) of mysterious purpose. Unique conditions in the tunnels, namely a combination of irregularly-shaped rock corridors made through blasting with concrete-reinforced structures, as well as the presence of water reservoirs and darkness, create a challenging environment for mobile robots. DMC members performed various 3D data acquisitions, including a precise laser scanning survey of approximately 14 000 m³ of the subterranean volume.

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AMICOS is almost ready!

One of the final meetings of the AMICOS team

In recent days AMICOS team held one of their final meetings. We clarified the details before conducting the final demonstration of the AMICOS platform. The joint effort allowed us to develop an inspection platform to run use cases such as monitoring of the deformation of tailing dams, the thickness of pipes in large-scale pipe networks or the technical condition of underground infrastructures, such as belt conveyors. We are excited to finally be able to present the results of our work, which will happen in the upcoming weeks.

AMICOS team is getting ready to rock!

Yesterday the team of AMICOS project held a very interesting and fruitful meeting. Since the last year of the project has started, we are getting ready to show the world what we are capable of. Around the middle of this year we will perform final demonstrations of our system regarding three separate use cases. Stay tuned, more announcements will appear soon, and it will be exciting!

AMICOS team discussing the last details for the finalization of the platform.

New AMICOS movie

You can now enjoy a new short movie summarising the recent effects of our work on developing prototypes of mobile inspection robots in the scope of the AMICOS project, and trying them out in various scenarios. The potential of implementing mobile robotics in the assessment of technical conditions of underground mines’ infrastructure is difficult to overestimate, but a lot of work must be still done to utilise the possibilities, which the newest technological advancements give us. In the AMICOS project, we create a fertile ground for the introduction of autonomous UAVs and UGVs in the raw materials sector to be used in smart mapping and inspection missions in the underground environment. The use-cases presented in the movie, are:

  • detection of malfunctioning idlers of a belt conveyor,
  • general inspection of infrastructure used for crushing and transportation of excavated material,
  • detection of humans with RGB and IR cameras based on state-of-the-art AI algorithms,
  • simultaneous localization and mapping (SLAM) performed in underground corridors,
  • creation of interactive maps with the use of data acquired by a mobile robotic platform.
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Lower-Silesian Festival of Knowledge with DMC

And once again DMC organised a worshop on digitisation and robotics in mining for university-, school-students, and others interested in innovations in the raw materials sector. For three days Adam Wróblewski and I (Mateusz Góralczyk) held virtual meetings to tell our visitors what is happening in our labs, how digital transformation of raw materials industry progresses, what robots, drones, IoT and cloud computing has to do with mining – all in the form of case-studies from AMICOS, SafeMe4Mine, OPMO, MEITIM, and MOIRA.

Some of the fascinating topics undertaken during our meetings were: how smart apps will help inspectors to ensure productivity and safety in open-pit, and underground mines, how a 3D model of a belt conveyor or an underground corridor can be created with the help of a drone carrying a digital camera or LIDAR, how we can use remotely controlled robots to identify damages of mechanical components, or to find a human in case of emergency.

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DMC show on robot-contest

Last weekend the robotic part of DMC team joined robot shows and workshops organized by the Scientific Circle of Mechatronics and Robotics MKNM “Synergia”, operating at the Faculty of Mechanical Engineering of the Wrocław University of Science and Technology (WUST) and the Association for the Development of Science and Culture “Progresja”.

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