BUTTE, Mont. — Montana Tech students are on the cutting edge of drone technology, and it's fitting for Butte.
A group of students is researching how to use drones to keep miners and construction workers safe. The students are flying them underground, and they believe it could help with safety.
The students are doing the research 100 feet down at the Orphan Boy Mine on Montana Tech's campus.
Tech is the nation's only university with an underground mine research facility. It is also the only one to fly specially equipped drones through its tunnels.
They're searching for signs of instability in openings too difficult or dangerous for workers to reach. For example, researchers are looking for cracks in the formations for some type of failure, like rock fall. In the past, it could have signaled the potential for a deadly collapse. That's where drones come in.
Graduate student Elizabeth Russell is one of the students doing the flying. She said she’d rather have drones do the work rather than humans.
"It's really dangerous to enter these areas. There's loose rock above. There's no protection, except maybe a hard hat, and if you have a huge piece of rock fall while you're in the area the mine is liable, and you might not survive,” Russell said.
Montana Tech geological engineering professor Mary MacLaughlin is behind the project.
Last summer, she said the research group, consisting of four undergrad and four graduate students, received over $215,000 to fund the year-long project.
MacLaughlin said the project is a push for the future of underground mining.
"I think the future of mining actually involves very few people being underground, so this helps us work toward that autonomous mining where we aren't putting people at risk -- just equipment," MacLaughlin said.
The project ends in July. As for the end goal, Russell says she hopes to accurately map all underground openings for the on-campus mine and carry that knowledge into other underground mines in the area.
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