The 5th International Congress on Automation in Mining, Automining 2016, was held at Hotel Enjoy in Antofagasta, Chile from November 30 to December 2. Over 150 industry professionals attended the 31 technical presentations by authors from 9 countries, as well as 6 plenary presentations and 1 discussion panel.

During the congress, the presentations covered issues related to: Information technology management and advances, and internet of things (IoT); Advanced process control and optimization; Instrumentation and sensors, safety and environment; Artificial intelligence, robotics, mechatronics and teleoperations, business intelligence, excellence; and Operational continuity.

“The fundamental issue emphasized by the congress was the presence of information technologies with their new trends focused on the internet of things and use of cloud computing. Many presentations focused on this, since companies are working along those lines”, commented Víctor Babarovich, Technical Coordinator of Automining 2016.

The fifth version of the congress was applauded by Operations Manager of Minera Centinela, Luis Sánchez, who presided Automining 2016.

“Without a doubt having these conversations is beneficial, since usually in issues related to automation there is a sort of fear of change as there is little general knowledge of what they could produce. In that sense, this and other events help to exchange experiences from other places, other latitudes, and with it be able to decrease the resistance to change and make it easier for these actions to be replicated”, he mentioned.

Automining 2016 was organized by Universidad Técnica Federico Santa María, the Advanced Mining Technology Center from Universidad de Chile, The University of Alberta and Gecamin.