Brisbane company to launch robotic mine inspection system

Australian Droid and Robot (ADR), a Brisbane-based robotics and data acquisition company, has received significant backing from private equity mining investment company Resource Capital Funds (RCF), which has committed an initial $2 million, plus additional milestones for further funding, through its mining innovation-focused investment strategy, RCF Innovation II.

The funding will assist ADR to scale the business and advance the commercialisation of its new Explora Remote Data Acquisition System. The system, launching in early 2025, will provide the regulatory and operational data that mines need to operate safely, productively and efficiently without having to send anyone underground.

At an average mine site, the ADR system will prevent 12 or more workers from being exposed to fatal or critical risks, while also saving two or more hours of daily production time, reducing costs by $250,000 every week, and saving over 27 tonnes of CO₂ each year.

ADR co-founder and CEO Dr Joe Cronin said the system is set to assist mining companies in meeting their Zero Entry Mining targets to eliminate unnecessary human entry into mining zones, dramatically reducing the risk of injury and potential death at mine sites.

“Every mining company has a team of geotechnical professionals and mining engineers who regularly have to travel to production areas, stop production, take measurements and conduct inspections,” he said. “You just can’t have 50-tonne trucks and loaders, which have limited visibility, operating in the same area as humans. This requires mine operators to stop production on a regular basis to get the data needed to operate the mine.

“The Explora Remote Data Acquisition System can collect data while an area is in full production as it doesn’t expose humans to risk. We believe our system will increase production time by 5–7% at most mines. That’s a considerable saving when you look at the operational costs and budgets of these sites.”

The Explora Remote Data Acquisition System features a range of sensors that are mounted to a robotic mobile base, which is housed in a self-contained docking station placed in the production area. The robot is remotely deployed, delivering real-time and accurate data on demand to assist with underground mine mapping and surveying; blast re-entry inspection; ventilation monitoring; fragmentation analysis; communications recovery for load, haul and dump machines (LHDs); thermal and visual asset inspection; geological mapping; and area clearance.

As part of RCF’s investment, ADR will also receive strategic guidance from Lyle Bruce, Partner, Resource Capital Funds.

“We are proud to be investing in ADR, which is helping remove people from hostile environments while also making mining more efficient,” Bruce said. “The ADR team is highly competent and leaders in their field, who work well together and have a vision aligned with ours. They want to make mining safer, cleaner and more efficient and are applying advanced robotics to realise this vision.”

The system will work in conjunction with ADR’s existing Explora XL Robot, which made headlines in 2021 after 10 of the unmanned robots were successfully sent as far as 1.7 km underground to inspect a collapsed mine in Tennessee and helped get the site back in operation.

“Our new system will enhance the robot’s data acquisition abilities by allowing it to remain permanently underground, preventing the need for it to be retrieved for data uploads,” Cronin said. “By utilising our system, mine sites will be able to have more LILO (log in, log out) workers working from a remote location to analyse the data collected. This means less people travelling, less requirement for people entering unsafe situations and less people having to move away or be away from their families on long rosters.”

Image caption: ADR founder Dr Joe Cronin and RCF partner Lyle Bruce with one of the robots that will be housed inside the Explora Remote Data Acquisition System.