FATIGUE MONITORING & COLLISION AVOIDANCE
Satisfaction
in safety
Paul Moore reviews some key developments in fatigue
monitoring and collision avoidance systems in mining,
including some big rollouts at major operations
atigue monitoring, especially of haul truck
drivers; and Collision Avoidance Systems
(CAS) are now major focus areas for most
mining houses, with trials and testing now
having been replaced by full rollouts and
meaningful results in terms of safety. Initial
operator hesitation in terms of feeling they are
being watched in relation to the fatigue
systems, has largely been replaced by a feeling
of reassurance that someone is watching their
back in case they do succumb to tiredness in
what the industry calls a microsleep. CAS
systems are getting ever more advanced and
being integrated to a greater degree with other
systems such as those for fleet management.
In July 2017, Guardvant, one of the industry
leaders in real-time operator fatigue detection,
announced it had been selected by Glencore
Australia for its Ravensworth open cut coal
operation. Guardvant’s OpGuard system will be
installed on a mixture of 54 Caterpillar 797 and
789 trucks. Ravensworth’s Mine Manager,
Murray Gregson explained: “We selected
Guardvant after an extensive year long trial of
their system. We wanted a reliable non-intrusive
system that assisted us in detecting and
supporting our operator’s fatigue management.
We found the Guardvant OpGuard system
surpassed these requirements and added
additional benefits of mobile phone detection
and a forward-facing camera.”
Guardvant Australia’s Managing Director,
Sean Perry says, “it’s been a very thorough trial
of our solutions, with significant developments
and improvements along the way at the request
of the customer. Putting our product through
Glencore’s Failure Mode Engineering Analysis
F
40 International Mining | JANUARY 2018
(FMEA) and Risk Analysis process was a
stepping stone to ensuring our product met
Glencore’s high standards.”
Ryan Hawes, VP Business Development at
Guardvant told IM that the company has quite a
few trials and installations ongoing going,
however, due to confidentiality agreements they
can’t yet be made public. In addition to this, he
said the company has new solutions that will be
coming out in 2018.
OpGuard is a non-intrusive fatigue and
distraction solution that continuously monitors
operators to proactively prevent accidents.
OpGuard’s infrared camera continuously
monitors the operator for eyelid closure, facial
and head movements, and other unsafe
behaviour (mobile phone use, reading, etc)
while the vehicle is in motion.
SmartCap moving ahead
In May 2017, SmartCap Technologies announced
its new collaboration with Newtrax
Technologies. These two industry-leading safety
solution providers are adapting Life by
SmartCap, already a world-first solution, into
one that will suit underground mining
conditions. The new initiative will bring many
benefits to both operators and supervisors
alike. Life provides real-time alerts to prevent
microsleeps before they happen, empowering
users to be their own fatigue manager.
Supervisors will have real-time data access so
they can make fact-based decisions that keep
their workforce safe.
Back on surface, at the BHP-operated
Escondida copper mine, a recent successful trial
of SmartCap Life has seen the system there
To date there are 1,757 DSS units being used in
mining operations and supported by Caterpillar
adapted to integrate the EEG brainwave sensor
into the webbing of hard hats rather than the
original baseball caps. BHP's Chief Technology
Officer, Diane Jurgens, told Sydney Morning
Herald: “It’s in 150 plus trucks, so it's not
inexpensive, but in terms of safety it's really
effective. So we are going to be rolling it out
across our other operations as well. The
technology right now is only used in Chile, but it's
applicable across all of our operations,” she said.
SmartCap Life is non-invasive and uses EEG
(brainwaves) technology to monitor operator
fatigue. Life measures an operator’s ability to
resist sleep and provides alerts as they progress
to a place of risk.
Daniel Bongers, Chief Technology Officer at
SmartCap told IM: “We’re proud to be working
with BHP to help their operators come home
safe every day. With deployments at multiple
BHP sites and its contractors, we’re excited to be
part of BHPs efforts to integrate its operations.”
He added that in addition to the deployment at
Escondida, the system is already fully deployed
at another BHP site. In terms of wider
deployment he states: “As an industry-proven,
repeatedly validated technology, we now have
mining deployments in the following countries:
Australia, USA, Canada, Chile, Peru, Mexico,
South Africa, India, Mongolia and Madagascar.”
The company is seeing a trend of sites
replacing camera-based technologies with
SmartCap. “Our clients consider falling asleep at
the wheel an incident, and camera-based
technologies are really in the business of
counting these incidents. As an early warning
solution, SmartCap empowers individuals and
businesses to prevent the incident by
intervening well prior to dangerous sleep
events. Our new product, Life by SmartCap, is a
truly ‘anywhere, anytime’ solution that allows
real-tim