Rostelecom and Softline IT Company have completed the implementation of the Smart Helmet positioning system at the Istochny deposit of the Khiagda ARMZ (part of the ARMZ Uranium Holding Co. / Mining Division of the State Atomic Energy Corporation Rosatom) located in the Bauntovsky Evenki District of the Republic of Buryatia.

150 digital devices have been put into operation, which allow you to remotely monitor compliance with industrial safety regulations. "Smart helmets" help to increase the level of physical safety of employees: they fix the presence of personal protective equipment on the head, transmit a signal to the dispatcher in the event of an employee falling or getting a blow, make it possible to control the location of people indoors and outdoors, and also allow you to monitor their movement and state during work.

“This year, the State Atomic Energy Corporation Rosatom set in motion the Vision Zero - Zero Injury. Therefore, the main goal of introducing smart helmets at the enterprise is to increase the level of employee safety. The first 150 helmets will be used by the personnel of our enterprise working at hazardous production facilities.” - said the general director of JSC Khiagda Andrey Gladyshev.

The Smart Helmet project was made possible thanks to the construction of an optical communication line in the Bounty Evenki and Yevrainsky districts of Buryatia. In 2017, Rostelecom and Khiagda jointly financed the laying of optics with a length of more than 200 km.

"This is a large comprehensive project to create a modern telecommunication infrastructure in the northern regions of the republic. It allowed providing high-speed Internet and interactive television to employees of the Khiagda JSC and residents of the villages of Shiring, Gund, Ising and Romanovka. The construction of optics gave an impetus to the implementation of the Smart Helmet project “an integral part of the Smart Mine,” said Andrei Zdarov, director of the Buryat branch of Rostelecom.

According to the developers of the system, the project will not only ensure the safety of personnel, but will bring economic benefits in the future: it will reduce costs, including repair, save raw materials, and improve the quality and quantity of products manufactured.

“For Rostelecom, the smart helmet project was the starting point for creating a whole portfolio of industrial solutions that we are piloting today across the country. The main tasks to be solved within the framework of industry projects are to increase labor productivity, automate business processes and safety. For example, we have developed a solution for creating an employee’s digital double, which allows you to control whether an employee has a set of required equipment and tools at the workplace. “Rostelecom is actively developing solutions related to accurate positioning and augmented reality,” said Danila Burmetyev, director of strategic projects at Rostelecom.

According to Softline representatives, the demand for the industrial Internet of things technologies from enterprises will only grow in the future.

"The technological solution that underlies this project will further expand the functionality of smart helmets, equipping employees with additional sensors to monitor the safety of workers, as well as expanding the functionality of technological installations, collecting telemetry from them remotely wirelessly," said project manager "smart helmets" Softline Nikolai Sudarikov.

Smart Helmet is one of the stages of creating Russia's first Smart Testing Ground, a single digital platform for the life cycle of exploration and production of solid minerals. At the first stage, in the Istochnoye deposit, which is being developed by JSC Khiagda, innovative intellectual technology for managing the development of uranium deposits by the method of borehole underground leaching was introduced.