PERSEPHONE Consortium Meets at DTU for Integration Week and System Validation Activities

From 19–22 May 2026, partners of the PERSEPHONE project gathered at the Technical University of Denmark (DTU) for a consortium meeting and integration week focused on advancing the project's autonomous mining technologies towards system-level validation.

The event brought together consortium members with expertise in robotics, autonomy, sensing, drilling technologies, geomodelling, and mining operations to review project progress, coordinate upcoming activities, and conduct the first integrated testing of key PERSEPHONE technologies.

A major highlight of the week was the integration event, where technologies developed across multiple work packages (WP3 and WP5) were combined and evaluated within a common operational framework. The activities focused on validating interactions between autonomous exploration systems, communication solutions, mission planning capabilities, and robotic drilling deployment platforms.

During the demonstrations, autonomous robots explored and mapped a representative underground environment, generating spatial information that could be shared with other robotic platforms through infrastructure-free communication between robots. The resulting maps and mission data were then used to support the deployment of the Stinger robot, demonstrating an important step towards future autonomous drilling operations.

The integration activities provided valuable insights into system interoperability, communication interfaces, mission coordination, and deployment workflows. As the first laboratory-based integration campaign, the event established a strong foundation for upcoming validation activities in realistic underground mining environments.

In addition to the technical demonstrations, consortium partners reviewed progress across all work packages, discussed upcoming deliverables and field trials, and aligned plans for the next phase of project integration. Particular emphasis was placed on the transition from individual technology validation towards complete mission workflows encompassing exploration, sensing, deployment, drilling, and digital twin integration.

The consortium meeting also included an exploitation workshop dedicated to discussing the future uptake and exploitation of the technologies and results developed within PERSEPHONE. Partners reviewed the results achieved so far and explored potential value propositions, application opportunities, and routes towards future market uptake. The discussions helped identify initial exploitation pathways and areas for further development, providing a foundation for continued work on the long-term utilization and impact of the project's innovations.

The DTU integration week marks an important milestone for PERSEPHONE as the project moves towards large-scale demonstrations of safe, autonomous, and digitally enabled deep mining operations.

Watch the integration demonstration video below to see the first integrated PERSEPHONE mission workflow in action.