A Toyota Info Technology Center (Toyota ITC) delegation traveled Chile in order to analyze possible collaboration projects with Universidad de Chile Center for Mathematical Modeling and Codelco.
The group, led by General Manager Kevin Sato held meetings with CMM Director Alejandro Jofré, CMM CIO Eduardo Vera and the new Codelco Chief Business and Innovation Officer Jaime Rivera. They also visited El Teniente Copper Mine in Rancagua to have a first-hand knowledge about the mining company work.
“We have no experience and no knowledge on such kind of mine, what kind of operations they have, what are the issues, and what is the action required for the system. So, we spent two days here with a lot of discussions and actions. We studied a lot what is a mine, what are the issues and what are the future focuses,” explained Sato.
The group analyzed the mine’s IT systems and its possibilities in control and communications between workers, machines and different systems, said the general manager: “Toyota ITC experience is the vehicular communication, car to car, car to infrastructure and car to pedestrian, and car to the mobile device. Our future collaboration will become of such type of technology in a copper mine”.
The Toyota ITC executives’ long-term goal is to develop useful experiments in Codelco’s facilities to create the “car of the future”.
“The copper mine is a very specific environment. It’s not the city and not the highway. It’s not similar to our society. However some issues are very similar. We need to communicate each other and need to gather the data as much as possible and we need to use that big data for control, safety, efficiency and higher quality. That kind of baseline goals is very similar for every environment and situation. For example, I saw a lot of traffic jam inside of the tunnel,” explained Sato. “Our experience on traffic control and our experience on ITS will be useful for the copper mine traffic control. And also that knowledge and development for copper mine environment will be useful, relevant, in our society, living in the city, on the highway, etc.”
The Japanese company will submit a draft proposal to Codelco and CMM in February or March of next year. This document could suggest the incorporation of other companies to a project where CMM can play a role of coordination and contribution from an academic point of view.
In fact, the Center signed an agreement with Codelco in June 2015 to develope new knowdledge and technologies for the mining industry.
