Iron ore producer National Mineral Development Corporation (NMDC) Limited has entered into a memorandum of understanding with Indian Institute of Technology, Kharagpur, for drone-based mineral exploration.
The NMDC is poised to become the first public sector undertaking to conduct drone-based geophysical surveys and hyperspectral studies, for mineral exploration. The tie-up will open a new chapter and set a benchmark in the field of mineral exploration in the country, CMD Sumit Deb said.
Spectral products, methods and algorithms for exploration using the Drone (UAV) for mining are to be developed as part of the collaboration, which would also lead to development of software spectral tools for mineral excavation and capacity building programmes on mining technology. The NMDC in a release said for six decades it has been exploring for a wide range of minerals such as copper, rock phosphate, limestone, magnesite, diamond, tungsten and beach sands amongst others right from the reconnaissance G4 level to the detailed G1 Level of UNFC.
Director (Production) DK Mohanty on behalf of NMDC and S.P. Sharma, HoD, Department of Geology and Geophysics, and Samir K Pal, HoD, Department of Mining Engineering, IIT Kharagpur, signed the MoU.
The NMDC said it is conducting exploration for various minerals in Madhya Pradesh and also in the Beloda-Belmundi block in Chhattisgarh for diamonds. It is the first CPSE to use space geophysics in Central Indian Diamond Province and the first to use online monitoring of exploration of data on the BHUVAN platform.
