Grant: Applied Research and Technology Partnership Grants

While mining and heavy industrial processes have fundamentally remained the same in Canada since their development in the late 19th century, these sectors have benefitted recently from the availability of new technologies that have helped to make work more efficient, environmentally friendly, and safe. Mining, for example has benefitted from robotics and the advent of the Internet of Things (IoT), but there are many other bourgeoning technologies outside of the sector that have the potential to improve operations and business outcomes. Operators, however, have a hard time adopting and integrating new technologies. Some possible reasons that cause the slow adoption of new disruptive innovations include large upfront capital investment, lack of pressure from competition, variations in site conditions for innovation, and unproven performance of the innovation. Heavy industrial companies tend to wait for proven results of new technologies before they consider adopting them. As a result, Cambrian R&D, Cambrian College's applied research arm, building on its track record through its Technology Access Centre, the Centre for Smart Mining, is proposing a portfolio of projects that focus on addressing the challenge of integrating advanced technology into heavy industries. The College plans to address the challenge of technology adoption and integration in heavy industry by focusing on projects with partners that have high-value to industrial end-users but that require translational applied research to get to the last mile of deployment and commercialization. This portfolio will be made up of projects in which Cambrian's expertise in technology in the heavy industrial context can help accelerate results for companies seeking to deploy solutions in these sectors. This is made possible by the subject matter expertise of our research team in high tech solutions and their experience with pitfalls common in these sectors when integrating new technologies.This project is novel in that it focuses on heavy industry and the critical phase of product development, integration, and deployment. We are one of the only colleges in Canada that focuses on heavy industrial technology like mobile equipment, mineral processing systems, and industrial internet of things solutions. Moreover, our focus on helping companies with deployment challenges is unique and offers an innovative value statement to companies desperately needing support in this area.