A Human-centred Internet of Things Platform for the Sustainable Digital Mine of the Future (DIG_IT)

The European mining industry is undergoing great transformations fueled by the rise of key enabling technologies, urbanization and industrialization of emerging economies that continue to drive growing demand of raw materials. The need to extract raw materials in a profitable, environmentally sound, and safe way for both mining workforce and communities is driving the mining industry towards innovative approaches to transform operations. Industry 4.0 provides a wide spectrum of solution in this day and age that the mining industry can implement however the industry is still hesitant to adopt these innovative approaches. Therefore, development of human-centered, environmentally-oriented and societal impact-driven technologies with the help of Industrial Internet of things (IIoT) solutions for mining industry is essential.

In order to develop such innovative technologies for the mining industry, EU, H2020 project DIG_IT proposes to develop an innovative IIoT platform (IIoTp) for smart, sustainable and efficient mining operations by collecting mining related data from three levels; 1) human, 2) assets, and 3) environment across several mines in Europe.

Mechatronics Research Group (MRG) at TAU is an important partner in the DIG_IT consortium working on developing IIoT solutions in the area of Engineering lifecycle management, reliability engineering and condition monitoring for the mining industry. The research will involve development of methodologies and principles for digitalization of mining machinery by adopting innovative IIoT practices in data collcetion, platform integration and colsolidation, interfacing and analytics. The ultimate goal of the research is to develop novel technology solution known as digital twins for health management of mining machinery in cooperation with other partners in the project.