GETs are usually a lost excavator bucket tooth, lost drill rods or drill bits in 12-24m deep blast holes, or a missing dozer ripper tooth. 95% of incidents are caused by lost drill rods/bits in a 12-24m deep blast hole.
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Technically, the “GET detection drone” is a DJI M300 RTK equipped with SPH Engineering’s SkyHub onboard computer with True Terrain Following system and SENSYS MagDrone R3 magnetometer, all under the control of UgCS ground control software.
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The drone’s job is to locate the lost GET before it enters the ore crushers or the mill, causing multimillion-dollar damage.
The general workflow of operations: the lost GET area gets isolated, moved to designated GET stockpiles, scanned by the drone, magnetic anomalies are accurately located in post-processing software, next cleaned with a selected cleaning machine equipped with HP-GPS guidance system, and finally removed to trash bins.
The cleaned stockpiles can get fed through the crushers and mill, recovering the ore without damaging any infrastructure.
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Magnetometer on the drone collects high-resolution geotagged data of the magnetic field in the survey area. After processing, a map of magnetic anomalies is generated to locate spots that are lost GET with high probability.
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