Dr Joel Spencer – Chief Executive Officer, The Institute for Drone Technology
ABSTRACT
The mining industry has been one of the great adopters of drone technology. The combination of clear use cases, the legal ability to operate drones around mines, the development of easily deployable systems, and the character of mine locations and the kinds of work undertaken, has seen drone use increase rapidly. Safety, cost efficiency and the ability more accurately capture actionable data (and new data) has underpinned this growth.
However, as in other industries, the deployment of drones in larger numbers has lead to a number of challenges for the safe operation of drone technology. Operating 50 drones safely is very different to operating 5 drones safely. We have been working with clients and partners in a number of industries, including in mining, to develop standardised safe management and training systems around the use of drone technology at scale. This presentation gives an overview of what this work has covered and where it is going in the future.
You may also like
- Post explosion atmosphere monitoring:– An industry study into available, low powered, sensors were conducted. The study was to identify commercially available equipment to sample the mine atmosphere post an underground incident.
- Ultra-resilient communication system:– An investigation was undertaken into the feasibility of components for a robust and resilient mine communication network. The network must survive an underground incident and be able to transmit information in and out of an underground mine environment.
- Blast protection (or blast resilience):– The blast protection was evaluated through subjecting different shapes of enclosures to actual blasts, in an explosion propagation tube.
- Navigational aids:– A series of test were undertaken to determine the suitability of using visible light, infra-red as well as radar to aid in self rescue. All test were undertaken in a “dusty”, or low-visibility, environment.