The Resilient Bio-inspired Modular Robotic Miners (ROBOMINERS) project is poised to make a transformative contribution to the goals outlined in the European Commission’s Critical Raw Materials Act (CRMA). By creating a bio-inspired, modular, and reconfigurable robot-miner, ROBOMINERS targets the extraction of small, challenging mineral deposits deemed uneconomical by traditional mining methods.
Key contributions to CRMA objectives:
- Boosting domestic production: ROBOMINERS facilitates efficient, low-impact, and cost-effective mineral extraction from previously inaccessible deposits, aligning with the CRMA’s push to enhance domestic raw materials production.
- Ramping up recycling: The robot-miner’s precise excavation techniques minimise waste rock and tailings generation, addressing the CRMA’s emphasis on increasing recycling rates and promoting the recovery of critical raw materials from products and waste streams.
- Diversifying the supply chain: ROBOMINERS enables the extraction of raw materials from unconventional sources, contributing to the CRMA’s objective of diversifying the sources of raw materials.
Read the full policy brief for further details: https://tinyurl.com/55ye5ms7
Photo: Guillaume Perigois via Unsplash
