Hexagon’s Mining division on 17 December 2025 signed a multi-year agreement with Montana Technological University, granting the Swedish industrial-tech firm full access to the school’s Underground Mine Education Center (UMEC) in Butte, Montana. The arrangement enables round-the-clock testing, validation and training on next-generation underground safety systems.
The pact pairs one of the world’s largest digital-mining technology suppliers with a full-scale academic mine at a moment when operators are pushing ever deeper for ore and demanding new safeguards against low-visibility collisions, hazardous ground conditions and worker fatigue. By formalising the relationship, Hexagon gains real-world tunnels, mobile equipment and instrumentation without building its own test mine, while Montana Tech secures industry funding and a direct conduit for commercialising its research.
Montana Tech announced the partnership in December through a campus statement, confirming that Hexagon’s Mining division “has signed an agreement… granting Hexagon access to the university’s Underground Mine Education Center” Montana Tech news release. Neither side disclosed the dollar value or length of the arrangement, but both described it as strategic and long-term.
The UMEC facility
Founded in 1900 as the Montana School of Mines, Montana Tech operates UMEC roughly one mile east of its main campus. The facility offers a network of training drifts, headings and stopes equipped with modern haul trucks, jumbos, ground-support rigs and sensor wiring—conditions that mirror an active hard-rock mine yet remain fully controlled for research. For Hexagon, which already sells surface-mine fleet-management and high-precision survey suites, UMEC becomes a proving ground to expand its underground catalogue.
Dave Goddard, president of Hexagon’s Mining division, said the agreement bridges laboratory concepts and field deployments at a time when deeper ore bodies amplify risk. “As the industry continues to explore deeper geological layers, the potential risks to personnel and equipment intensify,” Goddard noted in prepared remarks shared by the company. He called UMEC “an ideal proving ground for innovative safety technologies,” adding that access to an instrumented tunnel network shortens product-development cycles and lets engineers iterate directly with equipment operators.
Early focus: collision avoidance
According to Hexagon, early work at UMEC will focus on an advanced underground collision-avoidance system. The platform aims to integrate proximity-detection sensors, real-time location data and automated alerts to keep haul trucks, loaders and pedestrian miners separated in confined zones where visibility is measured in metres and wall angles are tight. The company’s engineers also plan to evaluate fatigue-monitoring cameras, situational-awareness dashboards and integrated mine-wide safety platforms under realistic noise, dust and humidity loads that can confound laboratory tests.
Why UMEC matters
Underground mines present a safety profile unlike their open-pit counterparts: narrow entries, poor line-of-sight, complex ventilation and a constant threat of rock falls. Regulatory agencies from Canada to South Africa now push operators to install proximity-detection or collision-avoidance systems as a condition of operating licences. Yet each site carries unique geology, fleet mixes and communications infrastructure, complicating one-size-fits-all solutions. Hexagon executives argue that field work at UMEC lets them tune algorithms for drift curvature, electromagnetic interference and multipath radio reflections before products reach paying customers.
Beyond engineering, the partnership extends to workforce development. Hexagon will offer Montana Tech students internships, software licences and access to live datasets, while its customer-training teams plan to run workshops underground. For miners hesitant to trial unproven safety kits in revenue-producing headings, demonstrations at UMEC provide what sales staff call a “look-feel-listen” experience without shutting down production cycles.
Existing portfolio and technical gaps
Hexagon’s current underground line-up includes operator-alertness cameras, personal-tracking tags and production-monitoring dashboards. Yet effective collision avoidance remains an unmet goal industry-wide because underground tunnels limit GPS signals, and line-of-sight sensors can be blocked by equipment housings or rock walls. By placing new UWB (ultra-wideband), lidar and sensor-fusion prototypes into UMEC’s mixed-fleet environment—complete with loaders reversing around corners or drills tramming between headings—the company hopes to achieve the sub-second latency and sub-metre accuracy regulators increasingly mandate.
From Montana Tech’s perspective, the agreement transforms UMEC into a living laboratory financed by an industry partner with global reach. Faculty gain access to Hexagon’s proprietary data analytics, while students will graduate having logged hours on commercial hardware, a résumé asset for roles in mine planning, automation or health-and-safety departments. The university has historically collaborated with equipment OEMs, but Hexagon’s focus on digital platforms and sensor suites complements the mechanical-engineering emphasis of past projects.
How the field tests will proceed
According to project outlines shared internally, Hexagon will stage pilot programmes in four phases:
- Baseline mapping: Engineers will survey UMEC’s tunnels, install high-bandwidth Wi-Fi and calibrate beacons for real-time location systems.
- Prototype deployment: Early-stage collision-avoidance units will be mounted on haul trucks and LHDs (load-haul-dump machines) to log near-miss events.
- Human-in-the-loop simulations: Operators and Montana Tech students will run scripted scenarios—blind corners, bidirectional traffic—to stress-test alert algorithms.
- Commercial readiness: Performance metrics such as false alarm rates, alert response times and hardware durability will feed gate-reviews before market launch.
The effort aligns with Hexagon’s “Alignment to Hexagon Xalt | Mining” roadmap, which seeks to integrate hardware sensors, analytics and visualisation into a single ecosystem for both surface and underground operations. Company officials say lessons learned underground often loop back to surface-pit applications, particularly in sensor redundancy and machine-learning models trained on sparse data.
Industry context
Global demand for underground sensor systems is forecast by research firms to grow at double-digit rates as mines chase narrow vein deposits that require less surface disturbance but introduce safety headaches. Major OEMs such as Sandvik, Epiroc and Caterpillar all tout collision-avoidance packages; however, interoperability remains a sticking point when a mixed fleet operates under low-bandwidth networks. Hexagon, which does not manufacture heavy equipment, positions itself as an independent layer that can sit atop any brand, a sales pitch UMEC trials will validate.
Yet analysts caution that technical prowess is only part of the adoption curve. Safety managers must prove to regulators and unions that digital interventions lower incident rates without overloading operators with alarms. By publishing anonymised UMEC test data in peer-reviewed journals—something Montana Tech faculty have pledged to support—Hexagon could convert technical results into regulatory credibility.
Looking ahead
Over the coming 18 months, Hexagon plans to rotate project teams through Butte in month-long sprints, mirroring agile software cycles. Field-collected insights will feed development centres in Tucson, USA, and Bilbao, Spain. Meanwhile, Montana Tech intends to weave real-time project dashboards into its mining-engineering curriculum so students can observe parameter tuning, failure-mode analyses and root-cause investigations as they unfold.
For the broader mining sector, the collaboration underscores a shift toward open innovation. Rather than guard proprietary test sites or rely solely on virtual simulators, companies are partnering with universities that can blend academic rigour with operational realism. As mines sink shafts past 2,000 metres and heavy-equipment automation edges closer to autonomy, the need for proofs of safety grows more acute.
Analysis: what it means for miners and communities
From a strategic standpoint, Hexagon’s deal illustrates how digital-first suppliers can accelerate product cycles without owning capital-intensive infrastructure. The model lowers entry barriers for safety inventions that might otherwise languish in lab settings. For Montana Tech and the town of Butte—historically defined by copper extraction—the influx of tech-focused investment diversifies a regional economy long marked by boom-and-bust commodity swings.
Successful translation of UMEC trials into commercial pay-offs will hinge on interoperability standards and regulatory acceptance. If Hexagon can demonstrate that its collision-avoidance stack maintains reliability despite mud, metal interference and human distraction, the company could set a performance benchmark that guides future policy. Conversely, if false positives interrupt production more than they prevent accidents, underground operators may hesitate.
The partnership offers a transparent crucible for solving one of mining’s thorniest problems: keeping people and machines safe in the dark, dust-laden confines of the modern subsurface workplace. Over the next few years, data emerging from the Butte tunnels could shape not just Hexagon’s product line but the baseline expectations for underground mine safety worldwide.
Sources
- https://mtech.edu/news/2025/12/hexagon-strengthens-underground-technology-roadmap-through-new-partnership-with-montana-technological-university.html
