- The renewed agreement will see the parties further develop their Digital Twin which will integrate multiple data streams from TMC’s future production system and will enable 3D visualization of its deep-sea operating environment, providing ‘eyes and ears’ to the regulator and stakeholders
- In 2022, TMC took delivery of a prototype of the Digital Twin which was deployed during successful test mining conducted by its subsidiary NORI and gathered rich data on the operational and environmental performance of TMC’s full production system.
- The Digital Twin is a core component of TMC’s broader Adaptive Management System (AMS) which is designed to utilise AI and hybrid machine learning capabilities of the Digital Twin with expert analysis to ensure operations remain within environmental impact thresholds, a system with potential applications for resource operations at sea and on land.
NEW YORK - Sept. 06, 2023 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- TMC the metals company Inc. (Nasdaq: TMC) (the “Company” or “TMC”), an explorer of lower-impact battery metals from seafloor polymetallic nodules, today announced that it had entered into the next phase of its relationship with Kongsberg Digital, a Norwegian leading software company that unlocks the value of data for customers within the maritime, energy, renewables, and power grid industries, to further develop the Digital Twin of the deep-sea operating environment of NORI Area D.
Following the successful trials of the prototype Digital Twin during test mining conducted by TMC subsidiary Nauru Ocean Resources Inc. (NORI) in 2022, the parties will now build upon the system’s capabilities by incorporating additional data streams which will be used to train AI models to determine key outcomes of its full production system, including the environmental impacts of robotic collectors operating on the seafloor.
Ahead of NORI’s expected first production in Q4 2025, the extensive range of data gathered throughout the water column by a suite of marine sensors and ingested into the Digital Twin will enable 3D visualization of deep-sea operations in a dynamic dashboard for review by stakeholders. The Company believes its AI-driven virtual operating environment will enable one of the most transparent natural resource projects in history.
Gerard Barron, Chairman and CEO of The Metals Company, said: “The Digital Twin and AMS will bring unprecedented visibility to our NORI-D nodule project, enabling the regulator and stakeholders to see exactly what we are doing, and when and where we’re doing it. This is the world’s first digital twin for subsea nodule collection and in the future, when combined with our AMS, there is potential for this system to enable operational optimization and transparency across other projects, whether in the deep sea or on land. This is a mission-critical system for us, and we could not have chosen a better, more experienced partner than Kongsberg Digital, who proved during test mining last year that they are well up to the task.”
Andy Jones, Chief Technology Officer for The Metals Company, said: “The hybrid machine learning capability enabled by Kongsberg Digital’s Kognitwin is important to our future deep-sea operations and environmental monitoring as it provides us with the proven accuracy and reliability of physics-based modelling combined with data-driven models for near real-time predictions and optimizations. This AI-driven approach will enable continuous learning and adaptation and enable us to test ‘what-if’ scenarios, allowing NORI to optimize for efficient operations while minimizing environmental impacts.”
“In the case of NORI-D there is expected to be an immense amount of live operational sensor telemetry feeding into the system. For example, an interactive web-based dashboard might show a mine plan of the collector vehicle on the seabed, in conjunction with the production vessel and a Remotely Operated Vehicle (ROV) all moving synchronously along the same paths over time. Hovering the cursor over the collector vehicle can callout its speed, direction, depth, efficiency metrics at any point in time. The regulator will also be able to monitor the plume attributes in near-real time, and operators can make adjustments based on this data and conduct simulations to maintain plume dispersal within predetermined thresholds.”
The Company plans to build out its AMS as a state-of-the-art, iterative and predictive system that will use environmental and operational data to enable TMC to keep its deep-sea activities within ecological thresholds expected to be set by the International Seabed Authority. The AMS will draw on expert opinion and hybrid machine learning to improve operational efficiencies and potentially reduce environmental impacts over time.
TMC believes that the AMS that it is currently developing has potential applications beyond the nodule collection industry and may look to explore these in the future.
About The Metals Company
The Metals Company is an explorer of lower-impact battery metals from seafloor polymetallic nodules, on a dual mission: (1) supply metals for the clean energy transition with the least possible negative environmental and social impact and (2) accelerate the transition to a circular metal economy. The company through its subsidiaries holds exploration and commercial rights to three polymetallic nodule contract areas in the Clarion Clipperton Zone of the Pacific Ocean regulated by the International Seabed Authority and sponsored by the governments of Nauru, Kiribati and the Kingdom of Tonga.
About Kongsberg Digital
Kongsberg Digital, a subsidiary of KONGSBERG, is an industrial software company shaping the future of work by changing how businesses design, operate and maintain their assets. Businesses trust us for our innovative carbon capture and storage technology, new energy ventures towards net zero, voyage optimisation, emissions reduction, and technology to help balance grids and complex power systems. We are transforming carbon-intensive industries by providing industry-leading solutions that extract value from industrial data. We enable businesses to connect physical assets to an industrial work surface, serving as one common infrastructure for decision-making across the value chain.
