MICROMINE says attendees at the upcoming Prospectors & Developers Association of Canada Convention (PDAC) in Toronto, Ontario, will be able to witness software demonstrations for Micromine 2018 and Geobank 2018, while also hearing about its artificial intelligence and machine learning initiatives for Pitram 2019.

All three solutions have been developed on the back of extensive consultation with MICROMINE’s key clients from across the globe, the company said.

The mining software provider has exhibited at PDAC for eight years and says it has experienced, first-hand, the growth, stature and influence of the conference over the years.

Amelie St-Onge, Regional Manager MICROMINE Canada, said: “Many exciting things happened for the company since last year’s conference, and we are proud and excited to share these news as well as information on our upcoming releases with our clients and with the mining community.”

Specialists attending the conference from March 3-6 include Technical Product Manager for Micromine, Frank Bilki; Regional Manager for Canada, Amelie St-Onge; Technical Pre-Sales for Pitram, Chris Hunt; Training & Support Consultant for Micromine, Liam Murphy; Technical & Support Consultant for Micromine/Geobank, Caleb Birchard; Business Development Manager, Jeremy Pestun; Business Development Manager, Joel Jeangrand, and; Regional Marketing Coordinator, Maryam Abbaszadeh.

Geobank is a data management solution that helps mining and exploration companies maintain the quality, integrity and usability of their essential data, according to MICROMINE. Geobank 2018 includes a range of features and enhancements including a new and improved user interface, Global Substitution Parameters and increased functionality when designing or editing Graphic Reports.

Micromine, the company’s 3D modelling and mine design solution, is due a new release in the December quarter of 2019. This is set to include a range of new features and enhancements that increase the overall usability and performance of the software, according to MICROMINE.

MICROMINE said: “While the initial look and feel of Micromine 2020 will be the same, the new version will come with some new features, these include:

• “New charting tools for Geostaticians; swath plots, boundary analysis, QKNA, top cut analysis, multiple charts, and ternary charts;
• “New unfolding tool for model interpolation – Micromine has long been considered the #1 product for un-folding complex orebodies for interpolation and our new unfolding tool takes this to the next level allowing us to model more complex orebodies, more rapidly;
• “New Stope Optimiser which will enable engineers to design optimal stope shapes based on economic and design constraints from a block model;
• “Improved scheduler; the existing Scheduler module has had significant improvements made to it for MM2020. A new Gantt chart and the ability to schedule auxiliary tasks are important but the biggest change will be the ability to use Gurobi to solve the schedule. Gurobi is the world leader in schedule optimisation solving and its integration with Micromine Scheduler will enable engineers to schedule larger, more complex problems, and;
• “Enhancements to Implicit Modelling and Pit Optimiser modules.”

MICROMINE is also releasing new underground mining precision software to refine and enhance loading and haulage processes as part of its Pitram solution in early 2019.

“This new offering will see the introduction of Artificial intelligence to take loading and haulage automation in underground mines to a new level,” MICROMINE said. “Utilising the processes of computer vision and deep machine learning, on-board cameras are placed on loaders to track variables such as loading time, hauling time, dumping time and travelling empty time. The video feed is processed on the Pitram vehicle computer edge device, the extracted information is then transferred to Pitram servers for processing and analyses.”