Third Partners’ Meeting

The INDIRES consortium met together in Slovenia last week, hosted by project partner Premogovnik Velenje, for our latest twice-yearly progress meeting. It seems hard to believe that we have now met together on three separate occasions and that we are approaching the half-way point of the INDIRES project. However, the presentations given by each partner, detailing the work they have carried out in the five months since the previous partners’ meeting, served to illustrate the large amount of work that has been carried out since we first met together, almost exactly a year ago.

One of the strengths of the INDIRES consortium is its interdisciplinary nature. Indeed we have partners who are involved in coal production and researching new mining technology through to partners who are contributing their specialist skills such as radio communication and robotics. The underground trip into the Velenje Coal Mine was, therefore, a valuable experience for those people who have valuable technical skills but do not have a mining background. These people reported that the trip was invaluable in providing a better insight into the environment and the harsh conditions in which the equipment being developed in INDIRES has to operate and survive.