From 5 – 9 September 2021 the academic community, engineers, scientists, industry executives, stakeholders and policy makers, and other professionals in the field of raw materials have attended the RawMat2021 Conference, an event that took place both in virtual and in person formats. The International Conference on Raw Materials and Circular Economy was held in Athens, Greece, organized by the Technical Chamber of Greece, the School of Mining and Metallurgical Engineering of the National Technical University of Athens and the Greek Raw Materials Cluster (GRawMat) under the auspices of SEV Hellenic Federation of Enterprises.

The event was mostly focused on the technological developments and future challenges regarding Raw Materials, with emphasis given on Circular Economy aspects. In this opportunity, the abstract submitted by the UNEXUP consortium was approved to be presented at the event.

The presentation of UNEXUP, titled “UNEXUP, a robot-based surveying technology for flooded mines and other underwater structures” was held on 6 September, under the session SESSION A4 – Mine of the future and transition to Industry 4.0. The presentation covered the overall details of the project, the robotic technology, commercialization, and also the four field missions that took place in the past months.

The project raised interest from the audience, who asked questions about the challenges faced in the field, the commercialization of the exploration service, and the pre-evaluation of the field sites.

The reports and webpages dedicated to the field missions are under development, and will be published on the website and shared on social media whenever they are ready and available. Stay tuned!