Digital Twin of a Large Mining Operation
Goals:
- Optimize operational efficiency in large-scale mining
- Provide performance analytics and predictions for equipment and processes
- Enhance safety by testing autonomous vehicle behaviors in a virtual environment
- Enable virtual commissioning of autonomous mining fleets before real-world deployment
- Reduce costs and downtime associated with physical prototyping and failures
Case Study: Mining Operator, Global
Customer: Boliden AB
Partner: Amazon Web Services
Challenge
Boliden AB, a multinational mining operator, needed to integrate autonomous haul trucks, safety systems, and equipment into operations while ensuring safety, reliability, and cost efficiency.
Traditional physical testing of autonomous vehicle systems was expensive, time-consuming, and risky. Boliden required a solution that could replicate mining conditions virtually, predict failures, optimize coordination, and accelerate deployment—without disrupting ongoing production.
Solution
Robotec.ai deployed its RoSi digital twin platform on AWS High Performance Computing (HPC) infrastructure to build a high-fidelity virtual mining environment. This enabled the teams to:
- Test and validate autonomous haul truck navigation across complex terrains
- Run large-scale multi-agent simulations to evaluate fleet coordination
- Use predictive analytics for throughput, safety risks, and equipment health
- Integrate with AWS services (EC2, ECS, S3) for scalable compute and storage
- Reduce physical prototyping through virtual scenario validation
AWS HPC allowed thousands of simulations in parallel, significantly accelerating the validation cycle for autonomous operations.
Results
- 30% faster validation cycles for autonomous fleet behaviors
- Reduced costs and testing risks through virtual prototyping
- Improved worker safety by refining layouts and identifying hazards virtually
- Optimized fleet efficiency via predictive modeling of routing and scheduling
- A continuous improvement framework with digital twins to support long-term autonomous operation strategies