First week of field work at the Urgeiriça mine, Portugal

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The UNEXMIN team is currently testing its innovative exploration solution in Portugal, at the closed and flooded underground Urgeiriça mine. The Urgeiriça field trials are divided in two sets of testing, with a period of laboratory work in between at INESC TEC. The first part has just ended and the first results are coming in:

  • 6th of March (Wednesday): The UNEXMIN team tested and packed the UX-1a robot and the needed equipment for the Urgeirica trials and travelled to the test site from Porto.
  • 7th of March (Thursday): The setup of the control room, launch site and the necessary communications went quickly as the Urgeiriça mine site had the appropriate infrastructures already in place. The first dive of the UX-1a robot was done on the afternoon of this same day, right after the team had received the necessary safety instructions from the Health and Safety body. The water table was ca. 7 m below the surface level in the shaft where the robot dived.
  • 9th of March (Saturday): The robot went down to 54m water depth (2nd level, 60m below surface level).
  • 11th (Monday) to 14th of March (Thursday): The UX-1a robot explored the shaft down to 104m water depth (4th level, 110 m bsl.). The entrances of the first four levels were mapped (1st level is at 30 m, 2nd at60 m, 3rd at 85 m and the 4th at 110m, below sea level).
    • The entrance chamber of the 1st level was partially collapsed, with lots of rocks, wood logs and metal pipes, so only a few metres were investigated not to risk the robot. The 2nd level is collapsed after few metres so it could not be searched. The 3rd level was in good condition, so this level was used in multiple test dives to test and develop the instruments. The visibility of the water in the mine was very good, and even with the sediment disturbed by the robot it sank quickly as it was in the sand-coarse size fraction.  The whole surface of the shaft was covered with wood, except the horizontal levels. The granite wall with black veins at the entrance of the 3rd level was recorded by the multispectral camera also. The γ-ray counter of the UX-1b was separately tested down to the 2nd level, lowered down in a cable parallel to another developed underwater γ-ray counter for cross validation.
  • 15th of March (Friday): The last dive was performed in the afternoon. After that, the control room and the site were partially disassembled until the second part of the field trials, from 1st of April onwards. The UNEXMIN team travelled back to Porto to INESC TEC’s laboratory and packed out the field equipment to continue testing and instrument calibration within the testing pool.

The first part of the Urgeiriça field trials went as expected: the UX-1a robot was further tested; instruments were working correctly; the robot as a whole performed its functions and managed to explore, map and gather information on some of the flooded areas of the Urgeiriça mine. These data will help the team to develop 3D maps and other visualisation tools of interest.

Now it is time for the team to proceed with the development of the UX-1b robot. This second robot, that will carry some other scientific equiment than its counterpart UX-1a, will be tested on the field during the second phase of the Urgeiriça field trials. It will collect some different data that will complement data gathered by UX-1a.

Back to the lab and then to the field again!

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Follow @UNEXMIN on our social media channels to keep up with the most recent news on the Urgeiriça field trials: Facebook, Twitter and LinkedIn.

Save the date: UNEXMIN final conference

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Save the date: The UNEXMIN final conference will be hosted in Brussels, on the 26th of September 2019! Take this unique opportunity to learn more about the project’s results and its link to European Raw Materials Policies and robotics.

About the UNEXMIN Final Conference

UNEXMIN will hold its final conference on 26th September 2019 in Brussels, ahead of the project’s closing in October. Project results, including the presence of one of the UX-1 robots, will be shown, discussed and demonstrated.

The programme will include high-level discussions on European raw materials policies, support from the UNEXMIN project to those policies and the European industrial innovation, and on the capabilities and future application of the exploration system.

Who should participate?

The UNEXMIN final conference will give a unique opportunity for stakeholders to discuss the UNEXMIN project’s main fields of work: raw materials exploration, mining, robotics, ICT development and others. Therefore, this event is particularly relevant to EU policy makers, academics, mineral exploration and exploitation companies, cave exploration companies, SMEs focussing on geological consultancy and minerals surveying, and robotics and ICT experts from private and public institutions.

Venue

Royal Belgian Institute of Natural Sciences
Vautierstreet, 29 I 1000 Brussels I Belgium

More information and registration

Registration will open by 29 April 2019.
To pre-register, send an email to /">.

UNEXMIN has received funding from the European Union’s Horizon 2020 research and innovation programme under grant agreement No 690008. 

The field trials at the Urgeiriça flooded mine, in Portugal, have finally started!

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The third set of UNEXMIN’s field trials is now ongoing. After the two previous trials a lot of revisions and improvements were made to both the UX-1 robot both on hardware and soft aspects. The technical teams that operate the robotic system also gained important knowledge with the previous “experiments”. The second UX-1 robot is currently being assembled in INESC TEC’s laboratory, and both robots will take part in exploring and mapping the Urgeiriça mine flooded shafts from now until April.

Brief description of the mine

The Urgeiriça Mine, located in the Viseu district, center of Portugal, was once considered one of the most important deposits in Europe due to the exploitation of its strategic commodities: radium (from 1913 until 1944) and uranium (from 1944 until 1991). In 1967 the mine reached the maximum depth of approximately 500 metres below ground The mine seized its operation in 1991.

Urgeiriça’s mission objectives are the following:

  • Continue testing capabilities, autonomy and scientific instrument array of the prototype robot UX-1a in a uranium mine in Portugal under different challenging conditions
  • Test the functionality of the second prototype UX-1b in a realistic mining environment.
  • Trial simultaneous dives of both robot in a realistic mining environment
  • Provide information on the status of the flooded mine infrastructure, i.e. main galleries and shafts

First images of the UNEXMIN team on the field:

Follow @UNEXMIN on our social media channels to keep up with the most recent news on the Urgeiriça field trials: Facebook, Twitter and LinkedIn.

UNEXMIN next stop: Urgeiriça mine, Portugal

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The UNEXMIN technical teams are on their way to Portugal in preparation of the third set of field trials linked to the project. This is set to happen between the months of March and April in the Urgeiriça uranium mine, Portugal. The novelty of this trial will be the presence of two UX-1 robots to explore and map the flooded part of the mine.

After the first two UNEXMIN field trials, at the Kaatiala mine and at the Idrija mine, it is once again time for the robotic and instrumentation developers to go to the field for one more trial. The third elected place to explore is a closed flooded mine in the centre of Portugal, the Urgeiriça uranium mine, once a very important source of radium and uranium. Here, the team will aim at exploring and mapping the three main shafts and tunnels, representing a more difficult environment to navigate and map when compared to its test site predecessors. Difficulty in operations will be characterised by the presence of two UX-1 robots operating within the waters of the mine: UX-1a and UX-1b.

The next robot UX-1b – from a final platform of 3 working prototypes – is currently being assembled and pre-tested in Porto at INESC TEC’s testing pool. Having two robots within the exploration and mapping platform gives security of operations, while at the same time, distributing the scientific payload through the surveyors, which translates into reduced size, weight and power demands of the individual UX-1 robots: one of the major benefits (and demands!) of the UNEXMIN robotic platform.

Follow @UNEXMIN on our social media channels to keep up with the most recent news on the Urgeiriça field trials: Facebook, Twitter and LinkedIn.

UNEXMIN at PDAC 2019!

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Once again, and following the example of last year, the UNEXMIN project is invited to be featured in a exclusive European Union booth specially dedicated to showcasing some of the European Horizon 2020 projects focussed on exploration and mining. The PDAC conference is held in Toronto, Canada, and this year will be held between the 3th and 6th of March.

UNEXMIN is currently developing and testing a multi-robotic platform to do autonomous exploration and mapping of flooded mines that aims at fostering cost effective exploration from environments that might still have valuable mineral resources.

Besides the opportunity given to be showcased at the European booth with a presentation and movies about the project, two members of the UNEXMIN project, RCI (through GEOREKA Software) and EDM, will also be present at the Prospectors & Developers Association of Canada – PDAC, extending the UNEXMIN project scope on the event.

Find the respective booths:

European Union
Booth Number: 7009N
Website: www.europa.eu/european-union

GEOREKA Software
Booth Number: 7211N
Website: www.georeka.com

EDM-Empresa de Desenvolvimento Mineiro, SA
Booth Number: 2136
Website: www.edm.pt

PDAC International Convention, Trade Show and Investors Exchange is considered to be one of the main global events towards mineral exploration and the mining sector. The conference will count with a large number of companies and personnel from the mineral exploration and mining industry, seeking knowledge and opportunities.

It is expected that the UNEXMIN project and its future technology will raise some interest, bringing forward the exploitation of the project’s results –  culminating with the technology being available for market purposes soon after the UNEXMIN project is over – on the 31st of March!

In case you want to learn more about the UNEXMIN project be sure to have a look around and search for the above mentioned booths.