Automated decibot swarm mining and tunneling
A variety of gemstone metamaterial technology based robotic units of various specialization and a size roughly between 1dm to 1m
in self deploying rail systems doing fully automating mining, tunneling, and underground working.
The concept in more detail
Using a swarm of advanced gem-gum-tec based robots
that are roughly in the scale between 1dm and fractally down to the micro or even nanoscale,
to fully automate mining using more advanced means than drilling and blasting like e.g.:
- for hard rock mining doing high pressure cutting with highly alkaline silicate dissolving solutions (see page mining)
- for microgranular loose ground mining doing appropriately sized microsawshoveling and
immediate infill of the cutting gap and wall addition for block removal leaving a void
The system would be accessible for setup and monitoring by humans above ground or in an already made safe underground environment.
Made safe meaning all the risks mentioned further below being sealed off and being taken care of.
Even that could become gradually increasingly automated.
Super advanced atomically precise technology for mining seems like one of the harder problems so not to expect early.
Still easier than e.g. nanomedicine.
Beside mining this would be the basis for underground transport and habitation.
Strongly influencing the look of our environment. (See also page: World building)
Not just one type of fully general and independently mobile mining decibotbot
I some analogy to early diamondoid nanosystem pixel (direct path)
mining decibots would not all be the same and fully general in capability
but rather a system with a variety of units specialized for different tasks
and many if not most of them of them may critically rely on gradually built up rail systems of some sort.
Choice of size-scale
Economies of scale usually dictate bigger being better, but there are obviously trade-offs at some point.
For advanced atomically precise gemstone based nanotechnology these tradeofs will likely set in much earlier with size.
Decimeter scale is already enormously big for this technology.
Further size increases may only yield diminishing returns in efficiency at the cost of modularity.
As a side-note: This does not only apply to mining but also to other tings like petrochemical processing and such.
In hard rock mining cutting bricks of larger size gives an increasing chance
of getting blocks with cracks and lack of structural integrity.
For loose material tunnel creation (and mining) there is no structural integrity in the first place.
In both cases for packaging into chunks/blocks for shipping for offsite usage/processing
with growing size an increasingly thick an strong container sealing will generally be needed.
Particularly in cases where some structural preservation is desired
and grinding or dissolving to more easily transportable forms is not an option.
(wiki-TODO: Do some scaling law math there)
Also blocks are typically in a scale that a human (or similar scale humanoid robot) can lift,
not that it matters much with full automation.
This also relates to:
- geological structure and natural gemstone preservation by
minimizing the amount of cuts and monitoring effluents during the cutting. - hard rock mining for aesthetic natural stone building walls and facades
Today
Today (as of writing 2026) mining (and tunnel boring) without atomically precise technology available yet is usually still heavily dependent on
- human operators going into mines
- big machinery machinery
- humans operating such big machinery
There are beginnings of mostly fully automated mining operations
but initial setup and oversight fully is usually still manual.
Mines are typically a dangerous and unhealthy work environment for humans.
- dust that can cause lung damage (silicosis) and ingestion of radioactive particles
- climate (temperature and humidity)
- risk of gas intrusions (carbon dioxide, methane)
- risk of water inundations
- risk of collapses
- lack of light (already improved with modern lighting technology of 2026
Maybe even with today's (2026) technology (still lacking atomic precision and gemstone based metamaterials - gem-gum)
it'll soon be possible to go a bit into the direction of the concept presented here.
See external links.
Related
- Mining
- Underground working
- underground transport and habitation => The look of our environment & World building
- Deep drilling
- Unknown matter claimer