ITEE Innovation Expo 2008 : Project Details

The future prospectives of in-situ mining

The diminishing access to high quality ore bodies is a reality that could hold dire environmental and economic consequences on a world scale if current mineral extraction and consumption habits are not curbed. This thesis seeks to identify the extent to which, if at all, prospective advances in in-situ mining technologies have the power to transform the fibre of the mining industry as we know it today and provide sufficient supply of essential resources both now and into the foreseeable future.

The field of in-situ mining is exceedingly complex in nature and incorporates a plethora of technologies born from multiple disciplines. However, the scope of this thesis is primarily limited to investigating technologies typical of mechatronic engineering disciplines. Specifically, it investigates the constituent elements necessary to employ a swarm of semi-autonomous robots capable of operating in an underground environment and suggests a number of scenarios for their operation in in-situ mining processes.

The thesis concludes with an overview of the barriers and limitations standing in the way of employing these technologies in industry and a discussion of the potential these technologies have to revolutionise the mining industry as a whole and curb the effects of diminishing resource supplies.