The University of Pretoria’s new virtual and augmented reality mine design centre, which is set to revolutionise both surface and underground mine design, was officially opened on Tuesday evening.

A total of R50-million has been invested in the centre, which has come out of a highly successful test phase ahead of its public launch.

The University of Pretoria has itself invested R32-million in the 1 600 m² complex and Anglo American group company Kumba Iron Ore R18.8-million.

Professor Ronny Webber-Youngman, the university’s mining engineering head, tells Creamer Media’s Mining Weekly Online in the attached video interview that although the surface mining environment has been the initial beneficiary of virtual reality mine design, scanning technology has evolved to such an extent that underground mines can now be scanned within a matter of weeks and virtualised for design improvement.

Design centre management will be embarking on an intensive campaign to promote virtual and augmented reality as technological tools to enhance design in general.

The centre has the capacity to change existing big data into useable information.

“We’re not necessarily going to be involved with a new design. We will be there as a support unit, putting information into a virtual environment,” Webber-Youngman explained.

On augmented reality, he pointed out that the potential use of augmented reality in the underground drilling environment could, for example, optimise drilling performance.

On conceptual and feasibility stage work, he said that the centre was in a position to assist at the earliest of conceptual stages and could, for instance, take the first borehole data and provide the wherewithal for optimal design and eventual construction.

Postgraduate students are available to undertake virtual reality research projects at the University of Pretoria’s Department of Mining Engineering, where a course on virtual reality and augmented reality applications in the mining industry is being offered.

With the centre also open to other South African and African universities, more than 1 000 students a year could potentially make use of it, not only for mining-related design but also for general industrial design.

Against the background of the University of Pretoria being part of the Australia-Africa Universities Network, the centre is envisaged as a gateway to African mining.

Entire project teams are able to view their projects on large screens.

Hazard awareness programmes can be done in the preferred language of the listener.

As a business unit on its own, the centre will have to generate its own funds through collaborative interaction with mining companies and everything that the centre codevelops with business will be made available to students.

It is understood that some mining companies already working with the centre are at an advanced stage of using scanning technology in underground mining, which replaces outdated surveying practices. (Also watch attached Creamer Media video).