Italy’s Paolo Cadeddu has designed and built a number of battery powered underground electric mining vehicles. These machines can be seen on the Facebook page “Machines for MINES” https://www.facebook.com/pages/Machines-for-MINES/272615819560605?ref=hl. He has partnered with a team of researchers and professors from a major Italian university to develop a vision system and intelligent guide, to create together a series of intelligent electric machines. The two parties are seeking a lender, who will become the third party in this enterprise.

The machines that the two parties propose to build and commercialise will be fully automatic, autonomous and intelligent. They will work in full autonomy, without any operator to guide them, but can also be controlled by an operator or through remote control. They will effectively have unlimited autonomy, in that they will be able to autonomously replace their batteries with other preloaded ones. They can therefore work 24 hours without stopping.

They also have the ability to work in dark, polluted and dusty places and will not constitute a danger to personnel, even if they are in the working area. They will also comply with all applicable safety standards and as stated are electric, powered by batteries – they will consume about 1/6th (16.6%) of the corresponding energy required for diesel vehicles; while also being very quiet and only releasing a limited amount of heat to the environment. There will be no need for special infrastructure to be installed in the mining workplace.

A more detailed advertorial on this development can be found on page 111 of the February 2014 issue of the magazine. Contact [email protected] or [email protected]. Telephone: +39 39 2982 7985.