Underground Mapping Applied
Our mapping drone has been in production since 2018 and has supported some amazing digital transformation.
The benefits of in motion LiDAR are dramatic in terms of safety and productivity:
- Survey 4 times faster – The scan of a typical stope using Drone based LiDAR is 15 minutes from arrival, setup, scan, and withdrawal compared to the 45 minutes using traditional CMS.
- Reduced Shadowing – Drone based LiDAR survey captures 90% to 100% of the stope area. Ground based CMS is often limited to 80% or less.
- Double Survey Crew Capacity – Crew capacity can double with no change in staffing because of faster survey underground and reduced work on surface.
- Safe Access – Crews can now survey in areas that were previously not safely accessible.
- Improved reconciliation – Crews can scan stopes multiple times during development to better monitor over/under scenarios.
The figures below show the comparison between traditional CMS (in red) and the LiDAR drone scan (in blue)
Maximized Use Cases Underground
Maximizing any return-on-investment means ensuring that the investment can be applied effectively.
Effective application of drone technology means maximizing the flight potential and the number of situations in which flight is possible.
SafeSight’s DB4 underground mapping drone is designed to ensure it can be leveraged in as many situations as possible. These include:
- Narrow access as small as 1.5mX1.5m
- The ability to operate were there are leads, and obstacles in the drift or stope.
- Adaptability to ground, hand or wench-based delivery to ensure you can always gather the data.
Features and functions that support maximum application of LiDAR technology underground are a key to ROI.
What’s often overlooked by Sites as they select high tech solutions is “support and Service Levels.”
High Availability Matters
Technology can be a great enabler of business transformation however if the solution is not highly available and reliable it can be a business “disabler”.
You can’t demonstrate ROI is your technology is out for repair or support.
Equipment Outage: Over the past 3 years we have tracked our service and support through our internal and Client facing support technology. The data shows our drones are typically in service and ready to use 99% of the operational window in which they can be used.
Service Levels: Service and Client satisfaction are critical and tracking measurable service and support data has helped us build better solutions and ensure we respond quickly to any service interruption or service request.