Unexmin: A New Concept To Sustainably Obtain Geological Information From Flooded Mines

Abstract

The UNEXMIN project is developing an autonomous robotic system that can explore and map flooded underground mines, gathering new geological data from locations that are now inaccessible for human exploration and that can be used in future sustainable applications. The robotic system – UX-1 – will have specifically designed tools for the challenging environment. Among these there are the water sampler, magnetic field unit and SLS ("Structured Light Sensor"). In the on-going development phase software and hardware tools for navigation, 3D mapping and data processing are being created. Post-processing software is being developed to provide optical and sonar imaging as well as geochemical, hydrological, geophysical, and mineralogical information from the variety of instrumentation to be carried by UX-1.