Hack Mining! a Techathon presented by RWTH & VDMA

Attend Germany's first raw materials techathon in Aachen from Fri. - Sun. 07.-09. October 2022, solve exciting Industrial IoT challenges, and awaken your entrepreneurial talent. Whether you study engineering, computing, natural sciences, business or philosophy - anyone is welcome. Attendance is free!

Register now!

Schedule.

We provide free lunch, dinner and drinks throughout the duration of the techathon to all attendees.
We do not provide free accommodation. The Hack Mining!-techathon addmitance starts at 16:00.

Location: Bergbaugebäude RWTH, AMT Institute
Directions: Link Google Maps

If you have any organisational questions, please do not hesitate to get in touch with Marius.

Friday, 07. Oct. 2022

16:00 - 16:30 Start & Admittance
16:30 - 17:00 Welcome & Introduction
17:00 - 18:00 Challenge pitches
18:00 - 18:30 Picking teams & challenges
18:30 - 19:30 Professional Pitch Coaching
19:30 - Open End Hacking

Saturday, 08. Oct. 2022

All day hacking.

Sunday, 09. Oct. 2022

until 12:00 Hacking
12:30 - 13:30 Presenting results
13:30 - 14:00 Jury picks winners
14:00 - 14:30 Award ceremony

Techathon Prizes.

Every attendee receives an event-related T-Shirt and attendee badge.

Register.

When? 07. Oct. - 09. Oct. 2022. Start: Friday, 07 Oct. @ 16:00
Where? Bergbaugebäude RWTH, AMT Institute. Wuellnerstrasse 2, 52056 Aachen
Who? RWTH students of any subject area
Fees? No fees, entirely free. Lunch, Dinner and Drinks will be provided for free
What to bring? Laptop + Peripherals & Machergeist. WiFi + additional hardware will be provided
Registration Deadline? 02. October 2022, 23:59:59
Prizes? 👆

❗ Prior to this event, we will inform all attendees about Covid saftey measures via email.

Register your attendance at our three-day techathon using the form below. Your registration will be confirmed by us. If you have any questions prior to the techathon, please get in touch with Marius.

Register here!

Register for Hack Mining! @ Wuellnerstrasse 2, 52056 Aachen -- 07. Oct. to 09. Oct. 2022.
Get your free Hack Mining! T-Shirt. Your size
We do not use your contact info beyond sending reminders or notifications for this event.

The Challenges.

Digital Twin – From Edge to Cloud to Insight

Talpasolutions GmbH 🔗
Coding Analytics Communication
With IoT, Big Data, and modern AI, we can optimize processes and significantly lower maintenance costs – the biggest drivers in mining operation costs. We log raw machine data and then perform advanced analytics in our cloud. The key challenges here are almost oppositional requirements of edge and cloud computing. Your task is to combine data from different sources in the edge format MDF4, then send the data to an endpoint where you will convert it into the standard Big Data format Parquet. Your analysis of the data will lead to insights that optimize mining production and maintenance. You will have real machine data of a dump truck from a mine available for this task. Our challenge requires a broad skillset, so make sure your team has expertise in programming, quantitative analysis, and mechanical engineering. Join us in making the future of mining more efficient and sustainable with cutting-edge technology. We hope to see you work together in a diverse and interdisciplinary team, to come up with brilliant new ideas - just like we at talpasolutions do every day!

Track Drive Condition Monitoring of Mining Excavators

Komatsu Germany GmbH 🔗
Mechanical Analytics Machine Learning
It is crucial to know the wear status of mining excavator track drives, because that helps to avoid costly unplanned downtime. To improve the current situation of risky and time-consuming manual geometric measurements, a concept of an automatic wear monitoring has been developed, that aims for detecting the wear during regular operation. As a proof of concept, a few hundred events were measured on a 550t-excavator and manually analyzed. Depending on the operating conditions, evaluation of different physical effects visible in sensor data allows conclusions to the current wear of the track drive. The task is to design an automatic algorithm to estimates the wear by evaluating the course of signals. To achieve that, toolboxes from Matlab (Signal Processing, Neural Network, Statistical) are to be applied. The outcome of the approaches should be validated by the manual evaluation results. To get you on track, an overview of the physics, videos and prepared sensor data will be provided. Take up the challenge and help make mining safer & smarter. Everyone, in particular students from engineering and computer science, is welcome.

Underground Mining Fleet 4.0 - Developing novel, data-driven IoT services

Hermann Paus Maschinenfabrik GmbH 🔗
Business Development IIoT
Mobile machines and equipment employed in underground mining & tunneling have developed rapidly in the past decades. Today, mobile machines and vehicles are equipped with the latest technologies suitable for these challenging conditions. Technologies in use and under development provide valuable data which is currently only used for limited purposes. Following the trends in the mining sector - e.g. efficiency, automation, sustainability, and safety of mines - data will be the foundation for future developments in many advanced mining technologies. You are asked to develop an IoT service offering for clients operating underground mobile mining equipment. The service offered shall be based on operations data of their underground fleet. The data will be provided by the clients to you as a service provider. This means you will take on the role of the data expert and the one creating value-added IoT services for them. Take on this challenge, learn about the underground mining business, and gain insider know-how about work at one of the leading special mobile equipment Made in Germany manufacturers, operating across the globe. Contribute your skills to lay the foundation for future trends in an evolving and growing business. Creative people with any background are welcome and to have an enjoyable fruitful weekend working on this task.

Smart Weighing - CAN-2-OPCUA

PFREUNDT GmbH 🔗
Coding Electronics Communication
A system is to be created that accepts the weight and status data of a platform scale and makes it available via an OPC UA server. The platform scale will be connected to a PFREUNDT WB60 electronic system. The WB60 puts the determined weight and status values on a CAN bus (J1939). This data is to be recorded on a PC and visualized using OPC UA.

PosSys 4.0 - 2D position detection system

Becker Mining Systems AG 🔗
Coding Electronics Sensors
A 2D positioning validation system should be developed for the purpose of evaluating the reliability and accuracy of a collision awareness and proximity detection module. Given the position of a mining vehicle and a known target, the distance between these two must be determined. An easy to use validation system with known precision is therefore required. Utilizing the same ranging technology as the collision awereness module, as well as using trilateration, a position from distances to known anchor points shall be determined by the validation system.

Note: Pick your teammates at the event or attend as a team - each team member has to register using the form on this website. If you decide to lone-wolf the event, that is fine with us as well.

Your Challengers.

Hermann Paus Maschinenfabrik GmbH develops and produces special-purpose machines and vehicles for special applications in tunnel construction and mining as well as for the areas of lift technology, construction machines and industrial vehicles. Our products have made a name for themselves as a problem solver in the industrial sector and trades – in both domestic and international use. Paus represents "Quality made in Germany".
Becker Mining Systems AG - Natural resources are limited and their extraction challenging. Our 1,500 employees worldwide support our customers in their transformation to climate-friendly resource extraction that increases customer productivity and production reliability while reducing their environmental footprint. Our high-quality, consistently reliable yet easy-to-integrate products secure satisfaction and loyalty in the mining industry worldwide.
At Talpasolutions, we provide analytic solutions for fixed and mobile assets in the heavy industries. These machines accumulate a wealth of disparate data throughout all project phases, from planning to operations and maintenance. We combine data sources including embedded or retrofitted sensors on mobile equipment and fixed assets. With our end-to-end solution, companies that work with heavy machines can gain insights from their data, allowing increased productivity, cost reduction and new revenue streams.
Komatsu Germany GmbH with headquarter in Düsseldorf is part of the worldwide business player Komatsu Limited (KLTD). Within the group, Komatsu Germany's mining division is responsible for the development, production and marketing of super large excavators for international open pit mining. Our Products are working all over the world, operating day and night under the toughest of conditions. At our 110,000 m² production plant in Düsseldorf, we produce excavators with weights of 250 t up to 760 t.
PFREUNDT GmbH, based in Südlohn, Germany, plans, develops and sells mobile weighing systems legal for trade including corresponding data transmission systems and software. As the founder of mobile weighing systems, the company has been a global innovation leader in the market for over 40 years. PFREUNDT's weighing systems reduce costs, optimize processes and create competitive advantages for companies in the extraction, disposal and recycling, agricultural and industrial sectors.

Your Organizers.

The Institute for Advanced Mining Technologies of RWTH Aachen University develops technologies for the automation and digitalization of mining machines and processes to enable safe, efficient and responsible raw material extraction. An important core area of the institute is the development of sensor technologies and corresponding algorithms for the generation, acquisition and processing of data and information along the entire data-information-value-chain. The challenging environmental conditions in mines place particularly high demands on people, machines, sensors and algorithms and require robust, connected and intelligent systems and solutions.
RWTH Innovation is a unique entity in the German university landscape, consisting of a transfer company (RWTH Innovation GmbH, a 100% subsidiary of RWTH Aachen University and RWTH Aachen University Hospital) and the Entrepreneurship Center (Chair of Economics for Engineers and Scientists at RWTH), which operate at the interfaces of research, industry and society. We support and accompany researchers and inventors at RWTH Aachen University throughout the entire innovation process, from the idea to the market-ready technology. We advise and support prospective entrepreneurs, train them and supports them on their way to successful start-ups. We provide industry partners with direct access to the research and innovation and talent ecosystem of RWTH Aachen University.
The VDMA represents over 3,200 mainly small and medium size member companies in the engineering industry, making it one of the largest and most important industrial associations in Europe. With an export quota amounting to 96 per cent, mining technology is one of the most export-oriented branches of the German engineering industry. VDMA Mining represents well-known, mainly medium-sized companies from the sectors open cast mining/materials handling, underground mining, mining processing technology and consulting, research and development. 145 companies merged in VDMA Mining representing more than 90 per cent of the entire trade volume.