Epiroc wraps up collaborative project for autonomous face drilling

“We've built a very strong consortium and partnership for the future, but we've also delivered some functions that we will release and continue to build on” says Oskar Lundberg, Global Innovation Manager at Epiroc.

Initiated in 2022, the Adaptive automation project took aim at developing autonomous face drilling through a partnership between Epiroc, Boliden, Algoryx, and Örebro University – with funding from the Swedish innovation agency Vinnova. Three years later, the partners came together to demonstrate the outcomes of the project at Boliden Garpenberg in Sweden.

“Automation is very important for Boliden to help us improve safety and productivity. We’ve had a lot of good discussions and ideas during this project” says Michael Andersson, Senior Engineer Mining Technology at Boliden. 

The demonstration showcased a new boom recovery function which addresses the issue when two booms get too close to each other and therefore stops the autonomous drilling – potentially leading to lost production time.  

“With the recovery function, we’ve added a sequence where the booms slowly retract from each other and restarts auto – and continues from there on” explains Douglas Hasle, software developer at Epiroc.

Another new function shown was the bolt finding proof-of-concept where a scan of the environment around the rig is used to identify bolts, enabled by machine learning. This can automatically prevent drilling directly into a bolt, which could lead to damaging the drill.

“As mines go deeper, mining companies face rising costs and increased safety concerns for operators. These new functions help us move forward towards fully autonomous drilling” says Oskar Lundberg, Global Innovation Manager at Epiroc.