Tech & INNOVATION
Six Smart Ways Mining and Aggregates Businesses are Using Drones
�e mining and aggregates industries are highly exposed to uctuations in price and demand. As a result, these businesses are always on the lookout for new ways to increase productivity while maintaining safety standards and reducing operational costs.
In 2017, drones have emerged as a must-have worksite tool. Regular drone surveys provide up-to-date information to site managers, project stakeholders and contractors, helping open-cut mines and quarries all over the world better manage their production, assets and land. Here are some of the smartest ways these industries are putting drone technology to work:
1) Stockpile management and reporting Stockpile management is perhaps the most widely used worksite application for drones,
and for good reason: drones have completely transformed this common work ow. �e days of ' walking a stockpile '( the traditional appro a c h w h e r e by a s u r v e y o r t a k e s measurements of numerous points on the each pile in order to calculate stock volumes within a spreadsheet) are surely numbered. Using a drone, any trained site worker can now capture the entire sales yard in less than 30 minutes and see the processed dataset available on Propeller ' s cloud platform within 24 hours. Within the platform, accurate volume calculations and comparisons can be generated in seconds, with all measurements easily exported to CSV les.
�e ease of surveying stockpiles with a drone means site teams can capture data much more f r e q u e n t l y, i m p r o v i n g r u n o f m i n e management and ensuring more consistent grades through the mill. At the same time, drones remove the risks that come with having survey personnel physically moving around the worksite. In short, stockpile management alone can amount to an effective business case for introducing drones to any mining or aggregates worksite.
2) Planning and building Drone data provides an accurate and up-to-date visualization of worksites allowing for better pit and dump design and management. With regular ights, sites can build up a visual record of changes over time, allowing site managers to check weekly / monthly pit volumes and compare the current surface against previous datasets.
By overlaying KLM design les on a 3D model
Page24 | Sep- Oct 2017 | FMDZ