Mining Metaverse – a future collaborative tool for best practice mining

ABSTRACT

Futuristic views of mine operations allude to the use of immersive virtual worlds that transport people into what is now called a Metaverse, a network of 3D virtual worlds that can be experienced by an unlimited number of people simultaneously. The concept and benefit of combining real and virtual worlds have been around for many decades and have evolved considerably in recent years. When these are presented as a digital twin with bidirectional data and collaboration capability, potential exists for a powerful communications tool for mining operations. Hence, it is time to discuss the Metaverse from a mining perspective and this paper asks, ‘What is the Metaverse and how does it relate to mining?’ This paper presents some case studies, concepts, a model and considers the benefits of a Mining Metaverse as a communications tool that enhances decision making via remote collaboration.

KEYWORDS:

• Metaverse
• virtual reality
• augmented reality
• mixed reality
• digital twin
• mine operations
• sustainable mining

Acknowledgements

The author would like to acknowledge the members of the Standards Australia IT-031 Committee for inspiring this paper as a spin-off of their Modelling and Simulation work.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).