Work is underway to develop techniques to integrate, analyze and display data collected during mining that builds upon previous work focused on development of technology to collect data while drilling to improve blasting results and material handling in open-pit mines. This research demonstrated the feasibility of measuring the elemental composition of the rock mass from samples automatically collected during drilling, and drill vibration data measured by a wireless system mounted to the drill stem. The project demonstrated how these data can be used in conjunction with drilling, geological, and post-blast-fragmentation data for blast design, material handling, and potentially, to improve mineral processing. This paper describes how these newly developed rock-mass characterization techniques can be further developed so that they are sufficiently automated to allow the data collected to be easily integrated into a mine-wide information system. Emerging technologies in sensors, networking, communications, and probabilistic network modeling are described that promise to enable process-control applications.
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