Category: News

The UNEXUP was represented at the European Robotics Forum (ERF) 2020, a major annual event with hundreds of attendees every year, which was held in Málaga – Spain, from 3 – 5 March 2020.

This event, organised by euRobotics under SPARC, the Public-Private partnership for Robotics in Europe, is the most influential meeting of the robotics community in Europe. Therefore, it was an opportunity to meet with the stakeholders from the robotics sector, in order to dialogue and promote the UNEXUP project to them.

In this occasion, our partner Claudio Rossi – from Universidad Politécnica de Madrid (UPM) – represented the UNEXUP consortium by engaging with stakeholders and distributing informative leaflets about the project, in order to raise awareness and interest from the robotics community, which is one of our target sectors.

The new raw materials exploration / mine mapping service is based on a new class of mine explorer robots, for non-contact surveying of Europe’s flooded mines. One of the ambitious goals of UNEXUP will be to add a fourth robot to the current multi-robot platform, providing additional functionalities to the exploration system, including better range and depth performance. Hardware and software upgrades, as well as new capabilities delivered by the platform are also envisaged for the current and new UX entries, which will greatly extend the usefulness of the platform in different situations.

The UNEXUP project was represented at the PDAC 2020 convention, held in Toronto, Canada, from March 1st to 4th.

The World’s Premier Mineral Exploration & Mining Convention is the world’s leading event in the mining community, where mining companies, geologists, engineers and organizations related to mining and raw materials exploration can share experiences, learn about innovative projects, discuss about the newest developments in mining processes, as well as the upcoming technologies in the sector.

Luís Lopes (LPRC) and Hilco van Moerkerk (UGR) – members of the UNEXUP consortium – were there in order to engage and interact with stakeholders from the mining community, to better understand the needs and requirements of potential customers of the non-contact mine mapping/raw materials exploration service for flooded environments – which is the key output of the UNEXUP.

Attending the PDAC 2020 convention was a valuable opportunity for the project’s representatives to dialogue with the key target audiences, not only from the EU, but worldwide, in order to understand the mining scenario and, therefore, to further improve the UX robotic system’s capabilities and instrumentations accordingly.

As a result, this will provide tools and guidelines to our engineers and data processors to develop an effective and innovative geological service at the end of the project, which will supply the current and future needs of the mining community.

February 2020 marks the continuation of the UNEXMIN project, now known as UNEXUP – funded under EIT RawMaterials, with a twist: the focus is shifting from scientific research to commercialisation of the unique UX-1 based technology as a mine mapping/exploration service for underwater environments.

The UNEXUP project team, composed of eight partners – including the new UNEXMIN GeoRobotics company, met on the 6th and 7th of February in Budapest, Hungary. In this opportunity, the consortium started discussions and planning on the future of the UX-1 technology. While in UNEXMIN the technology was designed, developed and tested, in UNEXUP the aim is to generate commercial interest to it, and to bridge the technology closer to the targeted markets.

During the first day, presentations about the five Work Packages that the project comprises were made by their respective leaders:

• Go to market – UNEXMIN GeoRobotics (UGR)
• Further technological development – INESC TEC
• Pilots – UNEXMIN GeoRobotics (UGR)
• Project management – University of Miskolc (UNIM)
• Communication and dissemination – La Palma Research Centre (LPRC)

These work blocks were then deeply discussed during the following day, for them to be adjusted and approved by the team, in order to drive UNEXUP to a successful outcome by the end of its three years of implementation.

One of the highlights of the kick-off meeting was a talk from Tamas J. Szabo, from the Faculty of Materials Science and Engineering at University of Miskolc. He was invited by the coordinator Norbert Zajzon to give a lecture about materials engineering, covering topics about polymeric components, corrosion of materials, chemical resistance, behavior of plastic and polymers, and others. Now our engineers are ready to further develop the multi-robotic platform in order to make it even more resistant to the challenging environments!

Now that the first steps are aligned and agreed upon, it is time to get to work and to make the non-contact exploration of flooded mines a reliable reality!