COLLISION AVOIDANCE
many suppliers are doing this with a trial-anderror approach .”
Hamersma said that a lot of this work is being done to make real site testing safer . “ It is quite a risk to test an unproven CAS on real machines , let ’ s say two 200 t trucks driving 40 km / h towards each other . We first want to set some kind of baseline that gives us confidence that we can actually test with real machines in a real environment – crawl then walk and run .”
Strata Products – the devil is in the detail
We caught up with Gert Venter , GM at Strata Products Worldwide , which supplies the HazardAVERT electromagnetic collision prevention system ( CPS ). Venter ’ s experience in South Africa goes right back to 2014 when the initial regulations were being put in place and he was working for BHP at Khutala Colliery as CPS project lead before joining Strata in 2015 .
Venter told IM : “ The devil is always in the detail . The complexity in terms of CPS implementation is real . The Northern Cape mining community and DMRE through the Northern Cape Mine Managers Association have been working closely with the Minerals Council and its MOSH adoption teams to create a functional specification on how to evaluate CPS technologies , traffic flow and risk analysis , CPS technical documentation , case studies and so forth . And a lot of good work has been done - in tandem with machine and CPS OEMs , the University of Pretoria ’ s VDG team is assisting OEMs to complete TRL4 testing . Other regions and provinces have not yet adopted the methodology of the Northern Cape as most have implemented Level 9 before these guidelines was developed .”
He argues the industry is still on a learning curve when it comes to ISO21815-2 communication – how to implement it between various OEMs and which portions to implement . And once you have got a tick box for the TRL4 testing , how do you take that and put it into practice in a real operational mine ? Up to then it is mainly theory based – we had a customer that was requiring full Level 9 from V2V and V2P , across the whole fleet . Our system could do it but once we started implementing and installing , it was clear all the machine OEMs were not capable of doing it for various reasons . There were a lot of older legacy machines – largely mechanical and easy to maintain but mixed with newer more intelligent machines that are more difficult to maintain from an electrical point of view . They ended up keeping Level 9 for V2P but opted to slow down only for the V2V until the technology matures . From a CPS provider perspective this is much more straightforward – we sense the other vehicle in the vicinity and relay a visual and audible message to the operator that they need to slow down . But to get to Level 9 you must get the OEM involved as you need the machine itself to act , and this may potentially require a 3rd party interface system to do this control of the machine – there are various 3rd party interface providers currently in the market .”
The situation is further complicated in that OEMs need to take on a portion of risk when it comes to Section 21 and third party interfaces which prescribes specific statutory health and safety obligations on OEMs in relation to their products and equipment used at a mine – that means legal responsibilities if there is a collision incident and potentially injury or a fatality . Then the CPS provider also needs to take on their portion of that risk . In an investigation a lot will come down to whether a slowdown and stop signal was sent and whether it was received – both from CxD system to interface and interface to machine . And whether the right training and the right support parts were supplied by all the stakeholders to keep the systems working as they should .
“ Once you deploy a 3rd party interface system via the CPS provider , then we as the CPS provider are having to start understanding in depth the machine mechanics – the braking system and acceleration system for example – which is outside of our normal scope . We have successfully done this , but the onus today is much more on the machine OEM to supply the 3rd party interface system as they know their machine systems better than anyone else . We work with interfaces supplied by the customer and / or OEM but will vet them if we have not used them before by doing joint lab scale testing with both systems . ISO21815-2 has not been the silver bullet everyone hoped it would be . You can have a situation where the CxD detection operates well – relays the commands to the third party interface system – such as proportional set points for braking and throttling down – but an older legacy machine does not understand the commands relayed through from the 3rd party interface system .”
On Strata ’ s customer base – it is still the market leader in underground coal CPS with about an 85 % estimated market share in South Africa . CPS has been operating in coal very successfully for years – why has it been so difficult to transfer it into hard rock ? “ Coal has to date largely implemented V2P only – in addition if you look at a production section in a coal mine , most of the machines – shuttle cars , continuous miners etc are tethered by cable to a power center . That makes it simple – you switch off the hydraulic pump and the brakes apply . So , it is easy to tie into the emergency stop circuit via the OEM designed and supplied interface . While a lot of hard rock mines use bord and pillar mining , they are using diesel machines which are much more mobile and travel at faster speeds . Thus , you need bigger and more reliable fields as well as repeatability . And the brakes require proportional slowing so as not to put the operator at risk .”
Finally , a note on Strata ’ s market success in both coal and hard rock : “ We have a very reliable and repeatable underground system – this is key . When we do our evaluations with customers , they want that consistency . We also have a deep understanding of what goes on in different mine areas , from loading areas to intersections . And our technical team has grown in field experience to the point where they understand not only our system ’ s data but the machine and interface data as well . So , they have an awareness of all the technologies involved in making the overall CAS a success including the monitoring and fault finding needed – interpreting what is happening to relays and commands to help resolve machine issues . And using that to have constructive discussions with OEMs and customers .”
Strata has stayed with an electromagnetic based system over the years , as it is highly reliable , easy to set up and has advantages like to some extent seeing around corners . But taking the system across to hard rock has seen a bigger generator to create larger fields for further detection to achieve slowdown and stop for faster moving machines , plus a Vehicle Alarm Device ( VAD ) functionality . New software can set fields appropriate to the situation . The system is also suited to a step approach where a customer can start with CWS ( Level 7 ) and then moving to CPS ( Level 9 ) is just a matter of setting up .
Outside of South Africa , Australia is a growing market for Strata – with a major new contract to roll out Level 7 CAS for a large mining company but with the plan to go Level 9 . In the Americas , MSHA has mandated CAS on continuous miners in coal , and Strata is supplying much of that market . In Africa , Strata has major CAS customers in Botswana and Ghana but with a lot of opportunities in Zambia , Mali and elsewhere . In South Africa itself , aside from the coal customers Strata has three important hard rock mines using HazardAVERT .
Hexagon ’ s layered safety approach
The latest news at Hexagon is its acquisition of indurad , a global leader in radar and Real-Time Location Systems ( RTLS ) technologies , along with its autonomous haulage subsidiary , xtonomy . It said : “ This strategic move underscores Hexagon ’ s commitment to advancing mine productivity , safety , and autonomy through cutting-edge technology .”
Key cited benefits of the acquisition are enhanced mine safety using indurad ’ s advanced radar-based collision avoidance systems to mitigate risks in high-stakes mining
environments ; and increased productivity thanks to real-time ore tracking and measurement to help automate mine workflows , reducing downtime and inefficiencies .
It also brings future-ready autonomy – as
International Mining | JANUARY 2025