Mine.io: A Holistic Digital Mine 4.0 Ecosystem

In the context of industrialization, informatization and sustainable development of the mining sector, Mine.io solution will build a novel mining digital ecosystem and a systemic structure for the implementation of Mining 4.0 in mining industrial environments. Mine.io solution will embrace the whole mining value chain and processes from resources’ exploration, extraction, and processing to waste management and mobility. The Mine.io project is designed as the next generation digital mining ecosystem. All processes are digitized using the appropriate sensors and the raw data are analyzed locally (edge computing), providing very useful information about all the operations of the mine in real time. The proposed integrated cloud-edge architecture will make the integration and interaction across currently disparate IoT systems and smart objects as seamless and uncomplicated as possible and support the distribution of intelligent services across all tiers of the IoT stack (i.e. from enterprise to the edge). To support this symbiotic hybrid architecture, Mine.io will develop smart IoT hubs (interconnected, virtualised autonomic and plug-n-play cognitive agents, found in a distributed arrangement within the mining plant) ideally suited for edge applications and customized according to specific needs for executing ML/DL (or similar AI related technologies) in the most optional way: minimizing response time and energy consumption. Each cognitive element may represent a subset of clusters fulfilling the same functional responsibilities (i.e. serving the same application needs). Mine.io infrastructure will also offer an application marketplace. Third parties can use the outcome / results of the analytic analysis procedure, to further enhance the procedures / operation / automation and supply chain management while keeping the Mine.io control app always updated and inline with future needs and milestones.