BUSINESS
SURFACE
COLLISION-AVOIDANCE
SAFETY SYSTEM
By Tarren Bolton
Enhance productivity and operational continuity and reduce operating costs through the reduction
of damage to assets.
B
ecker Mining South Africa’s
advanced safety device — the
Intelligent Collision Avoidance
System (ICAS) — provides
situational awareness for operators to
ensure optimum safety on
construction sites, opencast mines,
and for surface operations.
“ICAS is a critical safety system,
which encompasses the latest industrial
technology, to provide reliable real-time,
360-degree situation awareness for
vehicle operators working in potentially
dangerous and congested site
applications, from coal pits to the ports,”
says Andrew Trentelman, senior general
manager: electronics at Becker Mining
South Africa.
“Blind spots, poor visibility, and
driver distraction are common causes
for unwanted vehicle interactions
on mine and construction sites,
processing plants, rail and road
networks, and ports. By creating
awareness and eliminating blind spots,
these hazards are reduced, which
means fewer collisions and a lower
risk of injury. Operators have improved
reaction time to make decisions that
will avoid near misses and collisions,”
says Trentelman.
28
APRIL 2019
“This robust IP 67 marine grade device,
which consists of three components —
the display unit, GPS antenna, and radio
antenna — ensures equipped vehicles
and fixed infrastructure are always
visible and identifiable to operators, even
in harsh, dusty environments,” says
Trentelman. “The ICAS was developed
using knowledge and experience gained
in the marine industry with similar
applications to avoid collisions between
marine vessels (such as tankers and
cargo ships). This means that the
harshest environmental conditions
were met, because ocean crossings
will encounter serious corrosive, high-
humidity environments with extreme
temperatures,” Trentelman elaborates.
Applications for ICAS include heavy
vehicle (HV) to heavy vehicle, heavy
vehicle to light vehicle (LV), medium
vehicle (MV) to LV and HV, vehicle
to personnel, fixed and mobile plant,
advanced train and rail track worker
warning, and rail level crossing activation.
Configurable guard zones
The flexibility of the system enables
configurable guard zones to suit each
vehicle and specific site regulations, and
also facilitates accurate ranging with
speed adaptive zoning. “Guard zones
are configured based on the specific site
conditions. For example, a guard zone on
a site where the vehicles are traveling in
excess of 40km/h, the desired guard zone
would be far larger than on a site where
traveling speeds are limited to 20km/h.
The guard zone configuration is based on
the time or distance required for a specific
piece of equipment to slow down and
stop before colliding or interacting with
another vehicle or pedestrian. Hence,
the speed and direction of travel of both
interacting parties need to be considered,”
explains Trentelman. “In addition, different
vehicles on site will have different braking
capabilities which needs to be considered
in configuring the specific vehicle’s
guard zones. This is why configurable
guard zones are required and not a set
guard zone size for all vehicles and other
equipment or personnel,” he adds.
Trentelman explains that accurate
ranging is achieved through the highly
accurate GPS receiver of the ICAS unit.
This means that the exact position
(within approximately one metre), speed,
as well as direction of travel of every
machine is measured and shared with
surrounding vehicles and personnel on a
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