WideFind has been granted EIT RawMaterial’s start-up booster funding by a jury constituted by representatives from EIT RawMaterials and the raw materials industry. The financial support will be utilized to further develop WideFind’s solutions for the underground mining industry, with a special focus on solutions for underground mining automation. Support has been approved for the maximum amount of 600 000 SEK
WideFind has been granted financial support for the continued development of the company’s positioning solutions. The funding was granted to WideFind by Region Norrbotten and will help the company in further developing and evaluating its solutions for the underground mining industry. Support has been approved for the maximum amount of up to 1 200 000 SEK.
In March this year, WideFind's positioning system has been utilized by Luleå University of Technology (LTU) to demonstrate tunnel positioning for the SIMS Mining project. In the video, produced by the Control Engineering Group at LTU, WideFind’s positioning system is featured tracking vehicles, people, and drones.
For more information about the SIMS Mining project, please visit: https://www.simsmining.eu/
WideFind has attended the yearly Bergforsk- and STRIM-days conference where the Swedish mining industry and its stakeholders gather for presentations and discussions on a multitude of matters related to mining. Among other topics, the conference featured the current status of the Swedish R&D landscape, news on technological developments, and the sustainability and social acceptance of mining operations. Additionally, SIP STRIM and Svemin unveiled an updated version of the strategic research and innovation road-map for the Swedish mining, mineral and metal producing industry.
WideFind has attended a two-day forum organised by the Global Mining Guidelines Group at Luleå University of Technology. At the forum, issues such as autonomous mining, interoperability, and digital mines were discussed by prominent people from the mining industry. The event gathered industry representatives from all over the world. From the discussions at the forum it is evident that positioning technology can contribute substantially to the safety of miners and the efficiency of mining operations.
The positioning modules of WideFind have been the fundamental positioning infrastructure for enabling autonomous collaborative aerial inspection of a wind turbine at Skellefteå Kraft in Sweden. In the field trials the WideFind system has delivered positioning with an accuracy of a few centimeters, which enabled autonomous flying of the drones around the wind turbine.
Such positioning solutions are ideal for areas or infrastructures that have no sufficient good visual features for allowing successful visual odometry on the drones, while this demonstration is among the few, if not the unique, in the field of real life flying of autonomous drones with reliable and fast accuracy of a few centimeters.
WideFind is providing fast and reliable positioning solutions for the Horizon 2020 project AEROWORKS that it is focusing in the field of aerial infrastructure inspection and maintenance based on autonomous aerial robots.
The AEROWORKS project has as main demonstration platforms the field of aerial inspection and demonstration of wind turbines and combustion chambers, however, the unique positioning from WideFind can be directly applied to further real life applications, such as chimney inspection, dam inspection, power line inspection, building inspection (outdoors and indoors) and many many more.
A characteristic need in these type of applications is the need for fast, reliable and accurate position information that WideFind is fully capable to provide. Finally it is worth to mention that AEROWORKS is one of the biggest projects in Europe in the field of aerial infrastructure inspection and the utilization of WideFind’s solution is expecting to have a direct impact to the aerial robotics community.
WideFind has won an idea competition organized by SIP STRIM and EIT RawMaterials North. The business idea that the winning pitch revolved around is to utilize WideFind’s positioning solutions for mining applications, such as positioning machines, people, and equipment in underground mining environments.
The jury that awarded WideFind with the win was constituted by representatives from the host organizations as well as of representatives from the industry. The prize money of 600 000 SEK will be used to develop and evaluate the business concept.
WideFind has been invited to one of the largest industrial automation conferences in Norway, the NFA Conference, to present its innovative positioning solutions. The conference will take place in March 2017 and WideFind’s presentation will be on “UWB Positioning for Industry 4.0”. For a full program and more information on the conference please visit the NFA website.
WideFind has been accepted into the newly established Swedish bransch of the business incubator of the European Space Agency - ESA BIC Sweden. WideFind is one of the first eight companies to be admitted into the incubator, which has the purpose to facilitate business ideas based on space-related technologies.
Membership in ESA BIC Sweden lasts for two years, during which WideFind will have access to counseling and industry partners, as well as 500 000 SEK in financial support.
