Cyber-physical systems for smart mining: Industrial electronics 4.0 and data-driven process.
Duration: 2019–2022
This multidisciplinary project successfully conducted fundamental research on Integrated Cyber-Physical Systems (ICPS), tailored to the specific demands of modern smart mining, with a focus on advanced energy management and intelligent process control. A key achievement of the project was the development of the smart power converter concept, redefining power converters—critical actuators in mining operations and major consumers of electrical energy—not merely as energy conversion devices, but also as embedded sensors, monitors, and distributed controllers, fully integrated into intelligent industrial networks, in line with the Industrial Electronics 4.0 paradigm (Fraunhofer IISB, 2018).
The power electronics research team, led by the Pontificia Universidad Católica de Chile, made significant contributions by developing and implementing neural network-based controllers and data-driven algorithms, enabling the converters to actively participate in both local control loops and global process optimization. The project also demonstrated how converter-level data can be leveraged to train deep learning models, enabling predictive and adaptive control strategies that improved both process productivity and energy efficiency, in line with recent trends in mining automation (McCoy and Auret, 2019; Munir et al., 2017). Through this approach, the project established a solid foundation for future intelligent mining systems, where power converters play a central role in real-time optimization and decision-making.
Deputy Director: Javier Pereda
