BHP Olympic Dam implement Hovermap as part of their daily operations

Mining Monthly’s headlining article “Olympic Dam underground drone trial pays dividends” showcases the successful implementation of Hovermap in their day-to-day underground surveying.

BHP Olympic Dam is one of the world’s most significant deposits of copper, gold, silver and uranium, and is the largest underground mine in Australia. The mine has been using Hovermap in their operations for more than a year, flying into stopes to survey them on a daily basis.

BHP Mine Services Senior Engineer Daniel Woolmer explains how Hovermap has been implemented as part of their operations, and the benefits it has provided over traditional stope survey tools such C-ALS and CMS.

In the Mining Monthly article he states:

“We’ve been very happy with the system and have had some major successes with the trial in terms of the number of scans we can do and the ability to move people away from the voids,”

“The maximum number of scans we’ve been able to do have been 100% to 150% higher than with conventional methods.”

“The accuracy and quality of the data has been as good as the traditional methods, and, in certain situations we had better results than traditional approaches.”

“We can scan in areas we previously had not because we can keep a safe working distance.”

Hovermap is an extremely versatile solution, with customers able to deploy it in a variety of ways for many applications. This includes not only drone-based operations but also hand-held, vehicle-mounted or backpack-mounted scanning. Mr Woolmer highlights this fact, explaining the value of mounting Hovermap to their remotely operated underground dosers at Olympic Dam:

“Having that teleremote capability adds another area of functionality to our scanning,”

BHP continues to be at the forefront of change, deploying technology that makes for safer and more efficient working environments. Along with a growing number of customers including Newcrest, Barrick Gold and Northern Star Resources, they are part of the Hovermap Mining Program. This provides the complete solution for underground mining customers, including the Hovermap HF1 payload, drone platform, training, support, maintenance and software updates.

To read the full Mining Monthly article, click here: www.miningmonthly.com

For more information on Hovermap for Mining visit: https://emesent.com/industries/mining