HIGH PROFILE
Drills of the future
Paul Moore spoke to YUMARR Automation Senior Engineers and Directors, Nicky Guenther and Holger Salow, about the innovative JumboGuard safety solution for underground drilling as well as the company’ s evolution to date
Q Can you give some background into YUMARR as a company in terms of how you came to be in this specialised part of the mining automation market?
YUMARR Automation is specialised in inventing, developing and manufacturing turnkey automation & machine control systems. We use state of the art sensor technology that perceives the complex environment in surface or underground mines. Our systems enable machines to see and understand their surroundings, which is used for example to automatically avoid collisions or to halt the operation when personnel are in danger. The founding members of YUMARR have been working together for more than 15 years in the field of development of advanced driver assistance systems, semi- and full-autonomous driving systems for the automotive industry and machine guidance systems for the agriculture industry. In 2009, we started to devote all of our know-how and experience to mining and opted to specialise in mining applications and address difficult problems in areas where sensors, computers and automation traditionally had failed due to the extreme conditions. We found out that large heavy equipment operating in complex, unstructured and constantly changing surroundings in harsh environmental conditions posed very stringent constraints on system reliability, availability and safety standards. A system that is required to automatically identify people, vehicles and other obstacles in a mining operation has to be able to separate noise like water spray and dust from the relevant information. Our particular strength lies in the development of algorithms for object detection and classification( what type of object), image processing, feature extraction and the reduction of large data sets to relevant control signals. The software we develop is able to interpret critical situations, safeguarding the operator and better controlling the complex interactions between the operator and the machine. Our focus is the development of sophisticated but simple to understand and easy to use human-machine interfaces for commissioning, operation and maintenance support.
Q How would you summarise JumboGuard in terms of what is does, how it works and how it integrates with the drill’ s own systems?
JumboGuard is a prime example of such an out-ofthe-box system that we have developed which solves a difficult problem and allows operating crews to return back from work safely.
Nicky Guenther Holger Salow
People who are working with underground jumbo development drill rigs have to conduct tasks in a very hazardous environment where they are inevitably exposed to dangerous interactions with the machine. When a jumbo underground drill, for example, is used to reinforce the walls at the face of a tunnel, the machine has to insert long rock bolts and install steel mesh sheets. The offsider is responsible for carrying mesh into the danger zone and reloading the hydraulic booms with new bolts. This requires him / her to walk into the area where moving booms and rotating drills pose a significant risk to his / her life.
Unfortunately, this is the story of many accidents where miners have been injured or lost their lives. Incidents happened when people have made mistakes, were fatigued, where safety elements had been overlooked or administrative rules had not been followed. JumboGuard offers a solution that takes care of these human factors. As an additional safety layer, the LiDAR based system continuously monitors the drill surroundings for personnel and automatically isolates the hydraulics whenever a person enters the danger zone while the drill is in operation. This immediately stops all boom movement and rotation of the drill. As another unique lifesaving feature, JumboGuard actively prevents the reactivation of the machine as long as there is someone in the danger zone.
Q What practical challenges were there in terms of operating conditions at the outset and how were these overcome?
One challenge has been the typical but complex situation where quite a number of personnel may work at and around the drill and enter or leave the danger zone at different times or simultaneously on either side. This has been solved with an intelligent person counting algorithm that fuses the information from both sides and keeps track of the number of persons remaining in the danger zone. Only if all personnel have returned from the danger zone does the system allow a reactivation of the hydraulics. Another challenge has been to achieve a high level of operator acceptance. Without acceptance, even the best system would be deemed to fail. JumboGuard has not been designed in a climatised office environment, the main development stages have happened onsite and underground in close cooperation with the crews of these rigs. Invaluable input from the operators and a closed feedback loop have been the keys to success.
Q Despite it being called JumboGuard does it also have application on similar machines such as dedicated bolters, scalers, production drills and longhole drills?
70 International Mining | FEBRUARY 2018