Future of Mines Design aims at improving safety and health while saving costs in today’s as well as in future mines with increased depths and higher temperatures. An ultimate solution is sought for safety and health of the workers by separating the mine working sites into safe- and forbidden-to-work areas for humans in the control loop for directing at site mining activities. The ultimate solution for safety and health needs new design and technology.

The challenge is to operate without humans in forbidden places but to provide safety for the mine and machinery and efficiency for production and maintenance with an overall cost benefit. The new technology must rely on tele-robotics, ventilation control and energy management to counter hazards. Ease-of-operation machine control technology is needed to assist humans to work from remote location in tele-robotic operation. New mine ventilation control and cooling technologies are needed to operate in extend depth without humans but to allow re-entry for machine maintenance and rescue operations.

The presentation reviews the necessary technology elements for achieving the ultimate safety and health solution for the miners who will be replaced not from the mine but from the hazardous and unhealthy sites where nobody should reside even in today’s mines. The introduction of the DOET technology that assists the human operator with a Digital Operator Expert Twin allows for a gradual evolution of mine design from today’s manual, on-site mining operation to remote-controlled regular operation at forbidden sites.