APMA 2023 Micro-mobility Mining Bot

Submission: June 30, 2023
Registration: April 24, 2023
Language: English/French
Prizes: Please see the details below
Type: Open

Micro-Mobility Mining Bot

Canada is the only country in the Western Hemisphere that has all the critical minerals required to manufacture EV batteries: graphite, nickel, aluminum, copper, lithium, cobalt, manganese, molybdenum, and rare earth elements.

Canada ranks 1st in North American and 2nd in the world for raw material capacities in the battery supply chain.

The Canadian Critical Minerals Strategy will increase the supply of responsibly sourced critical minerals and support the development of domestic and global value chains.

Safety is always paramount and helping to improve the safety of workers in a mine, from falling rocks, entrapment, and possible fire, is critical. Robots have been assisting with the drilling an excavation, the detection of dangerous gases and the hauling of rocks in/out of mines for nearly a decade, but how can we further the relationship between humans and bots.

The APMA’s partners from Northern Ontario’s mines have provided valuable feedback to support this year’s design brief. Problems and challenges faced, both above and underground have two things in common: time and distance.

The Vision:

As the mining sectors overcome connectivity challenges and the pathway to autonomy increases, the introduction of last mile/meter utility bots must be explored. Working collaboratively with humans, these bots should support in making their working lives easier, less mundane and closing the gap on both time and distance.

Assumptions & Considerations:

The proposed utility bot design should be for production year 2030.

Competition Winners

Competition winners will be contacted at the email address provided in their submission package.
The final vehicle design could be chosen from one submission or two. The Design jury could choose one teams exterior and another team’s interior.
Prize money totaling $10,000 CDN. Will be awarded to the winning design team.
The APMA will issue a one-time payment to the winning design team(s). The prize money will be divided equally among team members.
Full press coverage of each finalist’s design work.

>>> Go to the competition’s website <<<