Digital driver support for interaction between vehicles in mining environments

Purpose and goal

Driving in underground mines is challenging in several aspects. The technology commonly used today (radio communication) can cause stressful, unsafe and inefficient transport underground. The overall goal of the project was to design, implement and evaluate a concept for a driver support system that can increase efficiency and safety when driving underground. A prototype has been developed and tested in a pilot study in real context.

Expected results and effects

In addition to the developed prototype, knowledge has been generated of how driver support should be designed for a future mining environment where manually driven vehicles will interact with remote-controlled and self-driving vehicles. The project was led by RISE. The consortium also consisted of Mobilaris, Scania and Epiroc. Boliden and LKAB have been stakeholders. The developed prototype and the result of the pilot study, as well as the consortium and knowledge generated, will set basis for a large R&I project where the solution can be evaluated and refined during long-term tests.

Planned approach and implementation

The project is based on the results of the feasibility study Navimine (funded by SIP PiiA) where two types of driver support concepts were developed and then evaluated in a VR environment. In the current project, the concepts were further developed into a multimodal interface that was implemented in two types of mining vehicles. The prototype was tested by drivers at Boliden´s mine in Kristineberg. The evaluation (interview and questionnaire) shows that a driver´s support has very great potential for increasing safety and efficiency when driving underground.