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Though multitudes of industries depend on the mining industry for resources, this industry has taken hits in terms of declining mineral ore grades and its current use of traditional, time-consuming and computationally costly rock and mineral identification methods. Therefore, this paper proposes integrating Hyperspectral Imaging, Neighbourhood Component Analysis (NCA) and Machine Learning (ML) as a combined system that can identify rocks and minerals. Modestly put, hyperspectral imaging gathers electromagnetic signatures of the rocks in hundreds of spectral bands. However, this data suffers from what is termed the ‘dimensionality curse’, which led to our employment of NCA as a dimensionality reduction technique. NCA, in turn, highlights the most discriminant feature bands, number of which being dependent on the intended application(s) of this system. Our envisioned application is rock and mineral classification via unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV) drone technology. In this study, we performed a 204-hyperspectral to 5-band multispectral reduction, because current production drones are limited to five multispectral bands sensors. Based on these bands, we applied ML to identify and classify rocks, thereby proving our hypothesis, reducing computational costs, attaining an ML classification accuracy of 71%, and demonstrating the potential mining industry optimisations attainable through this integrated system.

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Fragmentation size distribution estimation is a critical process in mining operations that employ blasting. In this study, we aim to create a low-cost, efficient system for producing a scaled 3D model without the use of ground truth data, such as GCPs (Ground Control Points), for the purpose of improving fragmentation size distribution measurement using GNSS (Global Navigation Satellite System)-aided photogrammetry. However, the inherent error of GNSS data inhibits a straight-forward application in Structure-from-Motion (SfM). To overcome this, the study proposes that, by increasing the number of photos used in the SfM process, the scale error brought about by the GNSS error will proportionally decrease. Experiments indicated that constraining camera positions to locations, relative or otherwise, improved the accuracy of the generated 3D model. In further experiments, the results showed that the scale error decreased when more images from the same dataset were used. The proposed method is practical and easy to transport as it only requires a smartphone and, optionally, a separate camera. In conclusion, with some modifications to the workflow, technique, and equipment, a muckpile can be accurately recreated in scale in the digital world with the use of positional data.

This paper proposes a method to estimate a mobile camera's position and orientation by referring to the corresponding points between aerial-view images from a GIS database and mobile camera images. The mobile camera images are taken from the user's viewpoint, and the aerial-view images include the same region. To increase the correspondence accuracy, we generate a virtual top-view image that virtually captures the target region overhead of the user by using the intrinsic parameters of the mobile camera and the inertia (gravity) information. We find corresponding points between the virtual top-view and aerial-view images and estimate a homography matrix that transforms the virtual top-view image into aerial-view image. Finally, the mobile camera's position and orientation are estimated by analyzing the matrix. In some cases, however, it is difficult to obtain a sufficient number of correct corresponding points to estimate the correct homography matrix by capturing only a single virtual top-view image. We solve this problem by stitching virtual top-view images to represent a larger ground region. We experimentally implemented our method on a tablet PC and evaluated its effectiveness.

An earth pressure balance (EPB) TBM is used in soft ground conditions, and these conditions lead to the fluctuation and instability of machine parameters. Machine parameters influence cutter wear and tunnel excavation. For this reason, to evaluate and predict the cutter wear of an EPB TBM, a 1D CNN model was used to provide machine-parameter-based cutter wear prediction using an EPB TBM operational dataset. The machine parameters were split into 80% training and 20% test datasets. Compared to traditional machine learning applications and two deep neural network models, the proposed model provided reliable results with a reasonable computational time. The correlation coefficient was 89.6% , the mean squared error (MSE) was 57.6, the mean absolute error (MAE) was 1.6, and the computational wall time was 3 min 22 s.

Drill bit failure is a prominent concern in the drilling process of any mine, as it can lead to increased mining costs. Over the years, the detection of drill bit failure has been based on the operator’s skills and experience, which are subjective and susceptible to errors. To enhance the efficiency of mining operations, it is necessary to implement applications of artificial intelligence to produce a superior method for drill bit monitoring. This research proposes a new and reliable method to detect drill bit failure in rotary percussion drills using deep learning: a one-dimensional convolutional neural network (1D CNN) with time-acceleration as input data. 18 m3 of granite rock were drilled horizontally using a rock drill and intact tungsten carbide drill bits. The time acceleration of drill vibrations was measured using acceleration sensors mounted on the guide cell of the rock drill. The drill bit failure detection model was evaluated on five drilling conditions: normal, defective, abrasion, high pressure, and misdirection. The model achieved a classification accuracy of 88.7%. The proposed model was compared to three state-of-the-art (SOTA) deep learning neural networks. The model outperformed SOTA methods in terms of classification accuracy. Our method provides an automatic and reliable way to detect drill bit failure in rotary percussion drills.

Rock blasting is one of the most common and cost-effective excavation techniques. However, rock blasting has various negative environmental effects, such as air overpressure, fly rock, and ground vibration. Ground vibration is the most hazardous of these inevitable impacts since it has a negative impact not only on the environment of the surrounding area but also on the human population and the rock itself. The PPV is the most critical base parameter practice for understanding, evaluating, and predicting ground vibration in terms of vibration velocity. This study aims to predict the blast-induced ground vibration of the Mikurahana quarry, using Bayesian neural network (BNN) and four machine learning techniques, namely, gradient boosting, k-neighbors, decision tree, and random forest. The proposed models were developed using eight input parameters, one output, and one hundred blasting datasets. The assessment of the suitability of one model in comparison to the others was conducted by using different performance evaluation metrics, such as R, RMSE, and MSE. Hence, this study compared the performances of the BNN model with four machine learning regression analyses, and found that the result from the BNN was superior, with a lower error: R = 0.94, RMSE = 0.17, and MSE = 0.03. Finally, after the evaluation of the models, SHAP was performed to describe the importance of the models’ features and to avoid the black box issue.