The Explora robot can autonomously conduct mining inspections and monitoring activities. | Source: ADR
Your name: Mat Allan, co-founder of ADR.
Your location: The tunnel of a deep mine. The explosion has just ended. The temperature is +45°C. Visibility is zero. There is a mixture of dust and potentially deadly gases in the air.* Your task: Be the first to enter the "exclusion zone" and see if people can be allowed in there.
Your profile: You are not human. You are a robot Explora from ADR. And you have an "iron heart" from Intel beating inside you. This is a first-person report on how edge AI conquers the last frontier, where there is no place for clouds and Wi-Fi, the underground world.
Part 1: A PARADOX THAT NEEDS TO BE DESTROYED
"Risking a person to check if it's safe for a person is absurd," says my creator, Mat Allan. It is this vicious circle that we are breaking. Previously, after each explosion in the mine, you had to wait for the dust and gas to settle, and then send an inspector with a sensor. Now I'm leading the way. My mission is to ensure that people only set foot on safe ground.
Part 2: WHAT IS REAL EDGE AI? THIS IS WHEN THE ROBOT IS A MOBILE DATA CENTER
Many people think that the main thing in a robot is wheels and manipulators. Delusion. The main thing is a brain that can process an avalanche of data right here, without connection to the surface. There is no Wi-Fi underground. The cloud is unavailable. Therefore, I have Intel Xeon and Intel Core Ultra processors installed — the same ones that work in servers. Imagine: every second I process millions of points from a lidar, streams from a thermal imager, and data from gas sensors. This is not "robotics." This is a "mobile data center" that has descended into hell.
My arsenal:
- "Sniff": Multi-gas sensors search for carbon monoxide, methane, traces of explosives.
- "X-ray vision": 3D lidar scans the tunnel arches for the slightest dislocations and cracks.
- "Thermal Imager": I'm looking for overheated bearings on conveyor belts to prevent a fire from miles away.
Part 3: THE MAGIC OF EFFICIENCY OR HOW NOT TO BURN OUT IN 5 MINUTES
The most common question is: how do I, with such a voracious "brain", work from 4 to 12 hours without recharging? The secret is in hardware acceleration. Intel gives me not just power, but special blocks for specific tasks: video decoding, working with AI. If I did everything head-on on a regular processor, I would turn into a pile of scrap metal from overheating in half an hour. Thanks to this, I can transcode several 4K video streams and run neural networks in parallel for analysis - and all this in real time, underground.
Part 4: NOT TESTS, BUT ROUTINE. THE END OF EXPERIMENTS
Important: I am not a prototype. I am a workhorse. For more than five years, people like me have been working in the mines of the giants Rio Tinto and BHP. My daily routine is inspecting conveyors and checking enclosed spaces. Thanks to me, the mines do not stop production for several hours for safe access by people. I save these companies millions of dollars in downtime and, more importantly, I guarantee that all the miners return home after their shift.
Part 5: WHY THE MINES? THIS IS THE FOUNDRY OF THE FUTURE
"The mine is the ultimate survival case," my creators say in ADR. If a robot can survive here in mud, caustic water, abrasive dust and at +50°C, then it will be able to work anywhere: in earthquake relief, at radiation-contaminated sites, in subway tunnels. But you need to start with the most difficult part. We are not chasing HYPE. We are solving the most pressing problem: saving lives and returning lost time.
The mine becomes not only a mining site, but also a testing ground for the harshest AI. The principles of autonomy and edge data processing that we are honing here will form the basis of smart factories, autonomous logistics, and urban infrastructure tomorrow. Perhaps in the future, complex systems of such "working" robots will be controlled by centralized "dispatch" platforms similar to JOBTOROB.com, which optimize their tasks in real time. But their brains, capable of thinking in the dark and dust, will be born here, underground.
