TL;DR:

  • VR safety training in mining reduces incident rates by replicating hazardous scenarios — rockfall, gas exposure, equipment failure — without putting trainees at risk
  • AR-assisted remote inspection lets surface experts guide underground workers through complex procedures without requiring specialist personnel to enter dangerous zones
  • Digital twins of mine infrastructure enable predictive maintenance, ventilation modelling, and emergency simulation that weren’t feasible with physical access alone

Mining sits at the intersection of characteristics that make XR adoption particularly compelling: extreme hazard to human life, remote locations, expensive downtime, specialist expertise that can’t always be on-site, and a global skills shortage in experienced mine operators and safety engineers. The result is an industry where the ROI case for XR is unusually concrete — not productivity improvement measured in percentage points, but lives saved and catastrophic equipment failures avoided.

VR Safety Training: Simulating What You Can’t Rehearse

Underground mining exposes workers to hazards that are genuinely difficult to train for without exposure: uncontrolled rock movement, sudden changes in atmospheric conditions, equipment failure in confined spaces, and emergency evacuation through unfamiliar routes in low-visibility conditions. Traditional safety training — classroom instruction, printed procedures, surface-level mockups — has significant limitations when the hazard itself can’t be safely recreated.

VR simulation addresses this directly. Companies including Immersive Technologies, Laerdal (via its industrial simulation division), and a growing number of specialist mining simulation vendors have built VR training libraries specifically for extractive industry scenarios:

Haul truck and LHD (Load Haul Dump) operation. Training operators on large underground equipment is expensive and risky using real machines. VR simulators replicate cab environments, equipment physics, and hazard scenarios — narrow tunnel navigation, tyre failure, load shift — with enough fidelity that trained-on-simulator operators reach competency faster and with fewer incidents on real equipment.

Emergency evacuation and refuge chamber use. Underground emergency procedures are time-critical and require familiarity with mine layouts that change as the mine progresses. VR allows workers to rehearse evacuation routes, practice sealing refuge chambers, and experience low-visibility navigation conditions repeatedly and safely.

Hazardous atmosphere recognition. Gas pocket encounters, ventilation failure, and spontaneous combustion events require recognition and response training that can’t be practiced safely. VR simulation recreates the sensory and procedural aspects of these scenarios with measurement equipment and response sequences.

Ground support installation and assessment. Installing roof bolts and mesh incorrectly is a leading cause of ground fall incidents. VR training replicates the assessment and installation process, allowing trainees to make mistakes and receive feedback without consequence.

The adoption pattern in mining has generally followed large operators first — Rio Tinto, BHP, Glencore, and Anglo American all have VR training programmes in place — with the simulation platforms increasingly accessible to mid-tier operators as the hardware and software costs have fallen.

AR Remote Assistance: Expert Guidance Without Physical Presence

Getting specialist engineers underground is costly, logistically difficult, and exposes them to risk unnecessarily when the issue can be diagnosed and resolved with remote guidance. AR remote assistance platforms — where underground workers wear smart glasses or use a tablet with live video, and surface experts see their first-person view and annotate it with instructions — have found strong adoption in mining for exactly this reason.

The scenarios where this proves most valuable:

Equipment maintenance and repair. An OEM service engineer in Brisbane can guide a maintenance technician underground in Western Australia through a complex hydraulic repair, annotating the live camera feed with step-by-step instructions, highlighting specific components, and confirming the technician’s work in real time. What would previously require flying in a specialist is resolved in hours.

Geological assessment. A senior geologist on surface can assess a face or drive condition remotely when a survey geologist or mine captain shows them the rock in question via AR-assisted video. Decisions about ground support requirements, blast design, or ore grade classification can be made faster and with higher-quality input.

Emergency response support. During an underground incident, having surface emergency coordinators with a live view of underground conditions — relayed by rescue teams or workers near the incident — improves decision quality and command communication significantly.

The main platforms used in mining include TeamViewer Frontline (formerly Ubimax), Scope AR, and Vuforia Chalk, with several mining-specific vendors building bespoke solutions. Connectivity underground is the constraint — reliable WiFi or LTE mesh networks through the mine workings are required for live streaming to function. Underground WiFi mesh deployment has accelerated significantly, partly driven by IoT tracking and blast control requirements, making remote assistance more viable as a byproduct.

Digital Twins: Managing What You Can’t See

A digital twin of a mine is a dynamic, data-connected virtual representation of the mine’s physical state — not just the static geometry from survey data, but an active model that updates with sensor readings from equipment, atmospheric monitoring stations, water management systems, and geotechnical instruments.

The applications of mine digital twins that have moved from concept to operational use:

Ventilation on demand (VOD). Ventilation is one of the largest energy costs in underground mining. A digital twin that models airflow, gas concentrations, and equipment location in real time allows ventilation to be adjusted to where it’s actually needed rather than running at maximum capacity throughout. Rio Tinto’s Oyu Tolgoi operation in Mongolia is among the high-profile deployments of VOD systems integrated with mine digital twins.

Predictive maintenance for fixed plant. Crushers, conveyors, and hoisting equipment represent assets whose failure stops production entirely. Digital twins fed with vibration, temperature, and power consumption data from these assets can identify anomalies indicative of bearing or motor failure before breakdown, scheduling maintenance during planned stops rather than emergency shutdowns.

Emergency simulation and evacuation planning. A live-state digital twin allows mine emergency response teams to model scenarios — where people are when an event occurs, which routes are viable, how long evacuation takes — in the virtual mine rather than in the physical mine. Updated with real-time personnel tracking, it gives surface commanders a live picture during an actual emergency.

3D visualisation for planning and drilling. Integration of digital twin data with spatial computing interfaces (VR headsets for planning sessions, AR tablets for underground reference) allows engineers to work with accurate 3D mine geometry in ways that 2D cross-sections on screen don’t support.

The Connectivity Constraint and How It’s Being Addressed

Every XR application in underground mining depends on connectivity that underground environments don’t provide by default. The sector has developed specific solutions: leaky feeder radio systems (traditional but limited bandwidth), WiFi mesh on ruggedised access points mounted along drives, private LTE/5G underground using distributed antenna systems, and fibre backhaul to surface.

The investment in underground connectivity for XR applications is typically justified across multiple use cases simultaneously — personnel tracking, equipment telemetry, blast control, and remote assistance all benefit from the same network. This bundling of business cases makes the capex easier to approve, and the connectivity infrastructure installed for IoT purposes is what unlocks AR remote assistance and live digital twin connectivity as additional capabilities.

The trajectory is clear: mining operators who invested in underground connectivity infrastructure in 2023–2025 are now in a position to layer XR applications on top. Those who haven’t are increasingly aware that connectivity is the prerequisite for the productivity and safety applications they want to deploy.