The leading consulting firm in the mining sector, Vantaz Group and the Universidad de Antofagasta signed a transcendental collaboration agreement to advance in Research, Development and Innovation initiatives aligned to technological solutions in the mining sector, through the project "Innovation in Higher Education" (InES).
The agreement was made official in November 2021 by the partners of Vantaz Group, Juan Cariamo and Pedro Gómez; the Senior Manager of the consulting firm, Héctor Miño; the Vice Rector for Research, Innovation and Graduate Studies of the Universidad de Antofagasta, Álvaro Restuccia; the Dean of the Faculty of Engineering, Marcelo Cortes-Carmona; and the coordinator of the Transfer and Licensing Office, Alejandra Portillo. Translated with DeepL.com (free version)
And to date, the first advances of the initiative have already been registered. Héctor Miño says that one of the first challenges was to find the needs of the mining industry in order to develop a specific technology that would help to solve them in the future.
To meet the challenge, the first thing they did was to identify a methodological framework that allowed them to make decisions to reduce risk and uncertainty: "We had to understand the client's needs in order to deliver a product with future value, then define the prototype and finally validate it. When launching a product, it is necessary to explore the market to analyze what changes or trends may be causing a business opportunity," he says.
The mining value chain is full of challenges. However, Héctor states that they came to group it into three groups: Smart Mining, Green Mining and Safe Mining, where finally the "InES Project" only focused on the latter, specifically on the Monitoring of Biometric Variables.
What is Biometric Monitoring? "Through wearable devices (electronic items worn on the body) that contain sensors, information is captured about the health status of people in operation, such as heart rate, oxygenation levels, heart rate, body temperature, etc.".
Public-private collaboration will make it possible to improve and specify specific occupational examinations according to the area, physical load according to the work sector and visibility of an employee's condition during the workday, optimize rest and break times with the objective of improving personal performance and concentration, avoiding accidents due to fatigue, and finally, improve response times to an incident, health behavior patterns in a given sector.
For Héctor Miño, the alliance with Universidad de Antofagasta has been key. He emphasizes that communication has flowed very well, since both institutions complement each other in a very enriching way. "In Vantaz Group we have a lot to contribute from our experience in the mining business, while the University has a great capacity for scientific research. It is a tailor-made solution," he adds.
Today this great project is still in the laboratory stage. However, they will apply for a Corfo fund to be able to implement it and build the first version of the device to test it in the field. With all these procedures carried out, it is expected to have a fully marketable product within two years.
