Innovation Through Active Collaboration

Innovation is at the heart of our work. With strong roots in leading mobile robotics research, we drive collaborative innovation with partners from both industry and academia – exploring new ideas, testing bold concepts, and turning cutting-edge technology into practical solutions. By combining our applied expertise with scientific background knowledge we accelerate the innovation process and create solutions that address real-world challenges in demanding environments such as mining, construction, and logistics.

Active Research Projects

CLEARPATH: Multimodal perception and AI for Safe Autonomous Navigation

CLEARPATH aims to develop failure-resilient semantic perception to ensure the safe operation of vehicles in environments with low visibility, primarily focusing on uses cases from mining and construction. Concretely, the consortium will implement and test novel multimodal methods for detecting obstacles and people (including full-body pose recognition), predicting the traversability of off-road terrain over time, and failure-resilient 3D mapping and localisation; all of the above by sensor fusion using 4D radar, lidar, thermal and visual camera data.

Project Consortium:
Retenua, Örebro University, Epiroc, Volvo CE, Boliden

Duration:
September 2025 to August 2028

Completed Research Projects

RADARIZE

Project Scope
The primary goal of project RADARIZE was to enable more robust navigation and human detection for autonomous mining vehicles in industrial environments exposed to low-visibility conditions such as under high levels of smoke and dust. With the help of recent 4D radar technology, challenging tasks were addressed including positioning, obstacle and people detection, terrain surface analysis under the presence of high-concentration smoke, dust, and fog.

The project contributed to improved future autonomous and manual mining operations in dust (for example, after blasting, or stirring up dust in earth moving applications), driving through smoke to evacuate staff from a fire emergency, and in inclement weather (snow, fog, etc). Improved solutions for mapping and navigation with for both recent 2D radars and novel 4D radars have been developed and successfully tested in realistic environments.

Project Consortium:
Retenua, Örebro University, Epiroc, Volvo CE, Boliden

Completed Research Projects

illuMINEation: Bright Concepts for a Safe and Sustainable Digital Mining Future

The ambitious EU-funded Horizon 2020 project with a consortium of 17 partners and a total budget of 8.9 Million Euro was carried out between 2020 and 2023. The project highlighted significant aspects of digitalisation in underground mining activities with the core objective of improving the efficiency and increasing the health and safety conditions for European mining operations and its personnel. The project's vision is to tap the full potential of a digital mine by embedding digital thinking into the heart of the mining businesses and improving digital skills of mining personnel.

During the project, Retenua's AI-driven RefleX™ machine vision technology powering the product line emitrace® was further optimized, adapted and tested for demanding underground and above ground mining environments. In particular the ability to reliably detect worksite personnel and selected infrastructure in the vicinity of vehicles – not only under regular daylight conditions but also in poorly illuminated environments – makes Retenua's solution highly suitable for use in both above and underground mining.

Looking for the right partner for your next research project?

Share your ideas and let's explore the opportunities together. You can reach out directly or simply use the contact form. We'll get back to you quickly.

Henrik Andreasson
henrik.andreasson@retenua.se
Mobile +46 (0)70 790 07 87