The country’s largest iron ore producer, NMDC Ltd, has signed a memorandum of understanding (MoU) for drone-based mineral research with IIT Kharagpur. The National Mining and Development Corporation (NMDC)is increasingly dependent on technical innovation and the digitisation of its exploration and mining database. The government has taken the first step in regulating and monitoring drone usage and operations in India, which are now employed in agriculture, urban planning, forestry, mining, disaster management, surveillance, and transportation, among other industries.
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KEY POINTS:
- NMDC and IIT Kharagpur will collaborate to create spectrum products, methodologies, and algorithms for drone (UAV) mining exploration.
- The collaboration will also lead to the development of software spectral tools for mineral excavation and mining technology capacity-building programmes.
- From the reconnaissance G4 level to the detailed G1 level of UNFC, NMDC has been exploring minerals for over six decades for a variety of minerals such as copper, rock phosphate, limestone, magnesite, diamond, tungsten, and beach sands, among others.
- Drone-based Geophysical Surveys and Hyperspectral Studies for Mineral Exploration would be conducted by NMDC for the first time in India.
- “NMDC’s collaboration with IIT-Kharagpur will usher in a new era in mineral discovery for the country,” stated Sumit Deb, CMD of NMDC.
- NMDC is exploring for various minerals in Madhya Pradesh as well as diamonds in the Beloda-Belmundi block in Chhattisgarh. It is also the first CPSE in the central Indian diamond province to use space geophysics, as well as the first to use online monitoring of data exploration on the BHUVAN platform.