The UNEXUP partners met in Ljubljana – Slovenia, as well as online, for the 5th progress meeting of the project. The hybrid event was held on 5 – 6 July 2022, with the purpose of discussing what has been achieved in the past semester, and to plan the activities to be completed until the end of the project – in December 2022. In addition, it was an opportunity to engage with other projects in a clustering event.

The agenda of the meeting started with a follow up clustering workshop that was held on 24th May, comprising UNEXUP, ROBOMINERS and Pipebots. In this occasion, the project coordinators and technology developers of the projects resumed the discussions on research challenges, as well as potential collaborations for the future.

After that, the consortium started an internal consortium meeting (5th progress meeting), following the usual distribution of presentations and discussions:

• WP0 – Market strategy and business development portfolio: Updates on the commercialization strategy and promotion tools.
• WP1 – Technology upscaling and development: Improvements on UX-1Neo, strategical development of UX-2, data post-processing, and developed instruments.
• WP2 – Pilots: Concluded field missions, lessons learned, and future plans for 2022.
• WP3 – Project Management: Upcoming meetings, milestones, and deliverables to be finalised.
• WP4 – Communication, dissemination and outreach: Outreach materials, communication activities, and the planning of the UNEXUP Final Conference.

The next day (6th July) was dedicated to open discussions about data post-processing, and the draft agenda of the UNEXUP Final Conference, which was commented and briefly adjusted by the consortium members. This event, and the final (internal) consortium meeting, is likely to happen in the second part of November 2022, in Brussels – Belgium. Stay tuned!

The event was concluded with a visit to the facilities and labs of the Geological Survey of Slovenia, guided by Gorazd Žibret and Emil Pučko, the hosts of the 5th Progress Meeting!