MURMANSK, September 28. /TASS/. The Kola Mining and Metallurgical Company (Kola MMC, a part of Nornickel) implemented a pilot project to use machine intelligence in quality control, the Kola MMC’s press service said on Thursday.

"Kola MMC at its processing plant has implemented a pilot project to control quality at the briquetting area by means of weak artificial intelligence and machine vision," the press service said. "This is the company’s first experience in using technology solutions of the kind."

Machine vision is a most developing and requested field of using artificial intelligence. A set of equipment includes a video camera installed above the line of finished products and three neural networks, which use received video signals to recognize and classify by quality the material moving on the production line.

At first, all the collected data is put into a base, where they are processed and then in the form of pictures, diagrams and tables come to the factory’s management practically online. The presented information analyzes how every shift has been working. This way, the factory controls the technology regimes and the products’ quality.

Kola MMC may implement similar solutions further on at other parts of its technology chain. The current quality control system identifies by 98% materials on the line, the accuracy of classifying the material type is up to 87%.

The processing plant’s briquetting area prepares copper-nickel concentrate for smelting. The technology process there is to have raw material pressed mechanically.