Two universities in the province are partnering up with a major networking company to develop new mining technologies.
Both the University of Regina and University of Saskatchewan will each receive $2 million from Cisco systems over the next ten years.
Ernie Barber is the dean of engineering at the U of S.
He says the money will be used to research new information and communication technologies.
He says the results could eventually be felt in the field:
“We could start with sensors. There are all kind of needs around real-time, air-quality sensing or real-time proximity sensing. Knowing how close a machine is to a mine-face, knowing where things are, being able to relay that data, knowing what the quality of the environment is, or knowing where machines are and relaying that back to operators.”
The University says sensors could also be used to locate workers within a mine and monitor their health.