Innovative approaches for the automation and digitization of mining machines and processes

At the Smart Mining Conference 2019 on 19/20 November, various approaches to the digitization and automation of mining processes were presented. The conference, organized by the Institute for Advanced Mining Technologies of RWTH Aachen University in cooperation with DMT GmbH und Co KG and VDMA Mining, brought together more than 200 national and international experts at the Tivoli Congress Center in Aachen.

The aim of the conference was to bring together international mining companies, suppliers and experts from research and industry to discuss current challenges and best practices in the automation and digitization of mining processes and machines and to create a platform for exchange between industry, research institutions and associations to discuss success factors for the mine of the future.

Among the highlights of this year's conference was a Canadian delegation of more than 20 Canadian business representatives who presented their technologies as part of the three-hour Canada Day program prior to the main conference. Another highlight was the participation of a notable Scandinavian delegation that presented various aspects of the large-scale European research project "Sustainable Intelligent Mining Systems" (SIMS) as part of the conference program.

Over two days, 36 presentations were presented by German and international companies, highlighting various aspects of automation and digitization in modern high performance mining. These ranged from the challenges of autonomous processes and the design of digital transformation processes to machine-to-machine communication and new methods for data analysis. Young companies also presented innovative ideas from the fields of computer vision applications, predictive maintenance using artificial intelligence (AI) and automated activity monitoring of machines in opencast mining operations.

The next symposium of the Institute for Advanced Mining Technologies will take place on 17 & 18 November at the SuperC of RWTH Aachen University and will be held under the motto "High Performance Mining". More information will soon be available at www.high-performance-mining.com.

www.amt.rwth-aachen.de