¡VAMOS!, the Viable Alternative Mining Operating System, has passed a major milestone with the successful delivery of conceptual design plans of the prototype and all associated equipment, Damen Shipyards Group informed today.

This work was carried out in Work Package 2 (WP2), which also designed the system’s architecture and its functional specifications.

Funded by the European Union’s Horizon 2020 research and innovation programme, ¡VAMOS! is a 42-month Research & Development project with estimated cost of approximately 12.6 million Euros.

The aim of the ¡VAMOS! project is to design and build a robotic, underwater mining prototype with associated launch and recovery equipment, which will be used to perform field tests at four EU mine sites. Three of these are inland, inactive submerged mineral deposits and the other is offshore.

Building on successful deep-sea excavation techniques, this prototype should provide a safer and cleaner option for extracting currently unreachable and/or uneconomic mineral deposits.

In addition, ¡VAMOS! will also look to enhance currently available underwater sensing, spatial awareness, navigational and positioning technology, as well as providing an integrated solution for efficient real-time monitoring of the parameters associated with potential environmental impacts.