The project is scheduled to run until 2025 and is funded by the Swedish government.

The goal of the project is to develop a fully autonomous face drilling system that can achieve results that are comparable with or better than those of experienced operators. The system will be equipped with a laser scanner and an AI system to scan and analyze the face before adjusting and applying the drill plan.

A key part of the project will be to construct and employ a digital twin of a mine - a simulated testing environment - for machine learning. This will allow the system to be trained on a much wider range of scenarios than would be possible in a physical mine.

"Using a simulation is a much safer and quicker way to accomplish the task," said Oskar Lundberg, Global Innovation Manager at Epiroc Underground division. "We simply cannot shut down a mine for the weeks or months necessary to train the system. This will hopefully enable us to greatly reduce the need for physical testing and also simulate scenarios that would be hard to set up in real life."

The project is still in its early stages, but the partners are optimistic about the potential of autonomous face drilling to improve safety, efficiency and productivity in underground mining

"The success of the blast is very much dependent on the quality of the drilling," said Oskar Lundberg, Global Innovation Manager at Epiroc Underground division. "We are trying to figure out if an autonomous system can achieve results that are comparable with or better than those of experienced operators."

"Using a simulation is a much safer and quicker way to accomplish the task," he added. "We simply cannot shut down a mine for the weeks or months necessary to train the system. This will hopefully enable us to greatly reduce the need for physical testing and also simulate scenarios that would be hard to set up in real life."