Hexagon’s Mining division has established a formal partnership agreement with Montana Technological University designed to strengthen its technological capabilities in underground mining operations. The arrangement grants Hexagon access to Montana Tech’s Underground Mine Education Center (UMEC), a facility that encompasses physical infrastructure, training areas, and specialized equipment for mining applications.

Partnership Scope and Objectives

The collaboration centers on leveraging UMEC’s authentic underground mining environment to support Hexagon’s product development initiatives. Specifically, the partnership enables Hexagon to conduct real-world testing and validation of emerging technologies targeted at underground mining applications. Key focus areas include collision avoidance systems, operator safety mechanisms, and advanced simulation capabilities designed for underground conditions.

Industry Context and Challenges

Contemporary mining operations face significant operational pressures that drive technological innovation requirements. As mineral extraction expands to greater depths in response to declining mineral availability near the surface, mining environments present increasingly complex challenges. These include constrained spaces, limited sightlines, and elevated safety risks for both personnel and equipment. The underground mining sector requires solutions that directly address operator fatigue, situational awareness deficiencies, and operational optimization during development phases.

Hexagon’s existing underground technology portfolio already incorporates solutions addressing these concerns. The company has deployed systems across global mining operations that focus on fatigue monitoring, situational awareness enhancement, and development process optimization. The new UMEC partnership represents a strategic expansion of Hexagon’s capacity to develop, test, and refine these solutions in increasingly realistic operational contexts.

Facility Capabilities and Applications

UMEC provides a controlled yet authentic underground environment that facilitates comprehensive technological validation. The facility enables testing across multiple dimensions: sensor functionality, algorithmic performance, and interactions between operators and machine systems. Hexagon intends to utilize UMEC for simulation exercises, product validation protocols, operator training programs, and customer demonstrations. This multifaceted application approach addresses a critical gap in the technology development lifecycle—bridging the distance between controlled laboratory environments and actual field deployment in operational mines.

Safety and Innovation Focus

Dave Goddard, President of Hexagon’s Mining division, emphasized that deepening mining operations inherently increase risks to personnel and equipment. He characterized the partnership as providing an optimal environment for accelerating the development of life-saving innovations. The collaboration combines UMEC’s world-class physical infrastructure with Hexagon’s technical expertise in safety systems, automation technologies, and sensor fusion methodologies. This combination aims to accelerate market introduction of underground solutions while enhancing confidence in their protective capabilities and productivity maintenance.

Technological Development Trajectory

The partnership directly supports Hexagon’s ongoing development of underground collision avoidance systems. These systems represent a critical safety advancement for underground mining environments, addressing the fundamental requirement for safe operation of both underground personnel and machinery across varying operational parameters including mining depth, fleet composition, and geological characteristics.

Historical Technology Development

Hexagon’s commitment to underground safety advancement spans multiple technology generations. Previous developments include fatigue-monitoring technologies that assess operator alertness and capacity, integrated safety platforms that consolidate multiple safety functions, and real-time alertness solutions that provide continuous operator monitoring. These developments have been documented through customer case studies and field performance results, demonstrating practical validation of technology effectiveness in operational environments.

Strategic Significance

The Montana Technological University partnership represents a deliberate investment in accelerating Hexagon’s underground technology roadmap. By securing access to UMEC’s facilities and expertise, Hexagon positions itself to develop, validate, and refine solutions more rapidly than laboratory-only approaches would permit. The partnership acknowledges that authentic underground environments provide irreplaceable validation opportunities that cannot be entirely replicated in laboratory settings.

This collaboration demonstrates a coordinated approach to addressing safety challenges in an industry sector characterized by persistent and evolving hazards. The integration of academic research infrastructure with private-sector technological expertise creates a framework for innovation that directly serves operational mining requirements.

Hexagon Taps Montana Tech’s Underground Lab in New Pact to Fast-Track Mine-Safety Technology

Details reveal a partnership between Hexagon’s Mining division and Montana Technological University that grants the Sweden-based technology supplier full access to the university’s Underground Mine Education Center (UMEC) in Butte, Montana, beginning in December 2025. The arrangement allows Hexagon engineers to test and refine life-saving digital systems under authentic underground conditions.

The two parties announced the agreement on December 15 and 17, 2025, describing it as a way to accelerate development of collision-avoidance, operator-fatigue, and other safety solutions while simultaneously expanding educational opportunities for mining students and fostering closer ties between industry and academia.

The arrangement addresses a pressing industry need: underground mining is pushing deeper in search of ore, compounding hazards such as restricted sightlines, equipment congestion, and operator fatigue. By turning UMEC into a living laboratory, Hexagon and Montana Tech aim to compress the product-development cycle, moving promising software and sensor platforms from the bench to the tunnel more quickly and with higher confidence.

Hexagon’s right to use the facility is formalized in an agreement that “grants access to the Underground Mine Education Center (UMEC) for testing and development,” according to the university’s announcement of December 17, 2025 mtech.edu. Two days earlier, Hexagon described the partnership as a move that “accelerates development through full-scale underground simulation while also supporting student education and industry-academic collaboration” Europawire.

Situated near Montana Tech’s main campus, UMEC features a network of headings, ramps, and cross-cuts carved into the once-productive Orphan Boy mine. The site combines real rock faces, heavy machinery bays, and instrumented work areas, giving researchers and students a controlled yet genuine environment in which to study geomechanics, ventilation, and digital safety systems. Hexagon engineers will be able to install lidar sensors, communications beacons, and onboard collision-avoidance modules directly onto equipment that operates in the drifts, recording how algorithms cope with low-visibility conditions, dust, and electromagnetic interference—variables that are difficult to reproduce in surface laboratories.

Under the agreement, UMEC will host four primary activities: full-scale simulation, iterative product validation, training programs for mine operators, and live demonstrations for mining customers. By converging those activities in a single venue, Hexagon expects to shorten the feedback loop between prototype and production release. Company materials note that deepening orebodies “inevitably increase risk to both personnel and equipment,” making speed and rigor in validation critical to safety. Hexagon’s current underground portfolio already includes fatigue-monitoring cameras, situational-awareness dashboards, and planning tools that optimize development rounds. The UMEC collaboration is designed to advance the next generation of those tools, particularly collision-avoidance systems that warn operators and in certain cases intervene to prevent machine-to-person or machine-to-machine contact.

Montana Tech gains industry realism for its students, who will be able to work alongside Hexagon professionals on capstone projects, data-analysis assignments, and equipment-calibration exercises. Faculty researchers in mining engineering and computer science also receive a steady stream of real-world data sets, helping them align academic output—such as algorithms for sensor fusion or predictive maintenance—with industry needs.

For Hexagon, the partnership is a calculated expansion of an underground technology roadmap that has evolved through multiple generations of products. Earlier milestones include operator-alertness cameras, integrated proximity-detection suites, and cloud-based monitoring services that log equipment interactions in real time. Field deployments from South Africa to North America have demonstrated the efficacy of those systems, but each iteration has required lengthy on-site trials at customer mines. The UMEC arrangement centralizes much of that testing, making it possible to replicate diverse geological settings and fleet configurations without disrupting commercial production.

The push toward full-scale simulation mirrors a broader trend in the mining industry, where deeper mines and automated fleets demand precise interaction between software and physical systems. Mining fatalities in narrow-vein and block-cave operations often involve restricted visibility and equipment congestion—exactly the scenarios UMEC can emulate. By installing collision-avoidance sensors on load-haul-dump units, drill rigs, and service vehicles in a real drift, engineers can observe the cascading effect of alarms, slowdowns, and system overrides, refining thresholds before deployment to revenue-generating operations.

From the university’s standpoint, the partnership cements Butte’s role as a hub for underground-technology research. Montana Tech already hosts federally sponsored studies on mine ventilation and ground control; the Hexagon alliance layers a commercial dimension onto that scientific portfolio. Students gain exposure to product-development cycles, preparing them for roles in supply companies and mine operations alike.

Industry analysts note that academic–industry collaborations can shave months off development timelines by eliminating the need to secure pilot sites and by providing continuous access to test headings. Although terms of the Hexagon–Montana Tech agreement were not disclosed, the two partner statements emphasize mutual benefits: Hexagon obtains an “optimal environment for accelerating life-saving innovations,” while Montana Tech elevates its educational assets and research funding.

Analysis—Implications and Outlook

The partnership’s structure illustrates an emerging model in heavy-industry innovation: embedding commercial R&D inside purpose-built academic facilities. Compared with temporary field trials at customer sites, permanent access to a controlled yet authentic mine reduces logistical complexity and enhances data quality. For technology developers, that means faster iterations and earlier detection of edge cases. For universities, it means sustained industry engagement and potentially new revenue streams.

If the collaboration delivers on its promise, underground collision-avoidance systems could reach market readiness sooner, contributing to the industry’s broader goal of zero harm. The template may also inspire similar arrangements in other mining regions, particularly in jurisdictions where legacy workings can be repurposed as research laboratories.

Sources

• https://mtech.edu/news/2025/12/hexagon-strengthens-underground-technology-roadmap-through-new-partnership-with-montana-technological-university.html
• https://news.europawire.eu/hexagon-partners-with-montana-tech-to-accelerate-underground-safety-technology-development/eu-press-release/2025/12/15/16/32/40/166820/