Successful Autonomous Flight Test in Open Pit Mine
RAI team in action in a bauxite mine in Itea, Greece
As part of an EU-funded initiative to promote sustainable mining, our Robotics and Artificial Intelligence (RAI) Group visited a bauxite mine in Itea, Delphi, Greece, as part of the M4Mining project (Multi-scale, Multi-sensor Mapping and dynamic Monitoring for sustainable extraction and safe closure in Mining environments).
The objective was to test and refine autonomous drone-based adaptive inspection techniques essential for enhancing mining safety, efficiency and data-collection. The team, comprising Post-Doc researcher Vidya Sumathy, PhD student Vignesh Kottayam Viswanathan, and Senior Research Engineer and drone pilot Ilias Tevetzidis, focused on two key goals:
Experimentally validating an adaptive flight path planning algorithm developed by Vignesh for inspecting the irregular mine face
Developing and integrating an automated flight path for detailed inspection for the drone developed as part of the project.
Using the DJI Matrice 300 drone, equipped with a 3D LiDAR and stereo vision sensor, the RAI team successfully executed our first autonomous flight for stable and precise inspection, even on the complex surface profiles of the open-pit mine. The adaptive flight path algorithm excelled in managing environmental variability, earning positive feedback from project partners.
This experience not only provided valuable insights into the challenges of field robotics in mining but also marked a major milestone for our team in advancing autonomous mine inspection.
From left: Ilias Tevetzidis, Vigness Kottayam Viswanathan, Vidya Sumathy
M4Mining Project members from LTU, NORCE, NEO, GFZ, UoP and ReSe at the Itea mine site, Greece.