News & Media
GroundProbe launches innovative laser technology for open cut mines, dams and tunnels
13 Apr 2018
GroundProbe has released their first laser-based monitoring solution to give early warning of impending collapses of open pit mine walls, dams, mine dumps and vegetated slopes, that can begin months or years before a collapse occurs.
The Geotech Monitoring Station (GMS) replaces traditional total stations that rely on mirrored prisms to be attached to the slope. The system can scan these points, but can also reflect its signal directly off the rock without the need for prisms; reducing the need for a dangerous industry practice.
“Prisms can be dangerous to install, inflexible to changing ground conditions and their repair or replacement can be unsafe, time-consuming and expensive,” said Lachlan Campbell, GroundProbe’s VP of Marketing and Technology.
The GMS is able to achieve excellent ‘virtual point’ precision by applying GroundProbe’s patented radar signal and data processing techniques to the long-range laser.
“With capabilities well beyond that of typical robotic total stations, the GMS is a complete-end-to-end intelligent monitoring solution with smart data capture, processing and analysis,” said John Beevers, GroundProbe’s Chief Executive Officer.
“The GMS, and the prisms and points it monitors, complements our Slope Stability Radar suite to provide a complete monitoring strategy for our customers, allowing them to better manage risk, increase productivity, and ensure maximum safety.”
As an Electronic Distance Measurement (EDM) LiDAR, the GMS monitors through automatically measuring hundreds or up to a thousand discrete points on a wall, in the form of physical and virtual prisms.
“Like all of our products, it’s not just a piece of hardware, but a comprehensive, complete monitoring system,” said Product Manager, Fernanda Carrera.
“The GMS monitors vast mine areas for long periods of time of many months to many years.
“It specialises in background monitoring in open cut pits and highly vegetated slopes, as well as detecting and measuring small-scale movement, on tailings dams, dumps and cuttings, that precede a collapse,” she said.
The GMS joins GroundProbe’s innovative and ever-growing suite of products as a long-term, background monitoring tool.
“Our patent-pending visualisation technique that co-locates data with the ultra-high definition images captured by the GMS’s dual cameras is a step change in data visualisation for prism monitoring,” said Fernanda Carrea, GroundProbe’s Product Manager.
“Automatically visualising data and heat maps on high-resolution photos, or in 3D, sets the GMS apart from existing solutions, which often force users to view data in a table rather than more intuitive visualisations.
“The GMS’s integration with GroundProbe’s SSR-Viewer software solves these shortcomings.”
The dual camera imaging capabilities of the GMS, wide-angle and telescopic, permits users to precisely see and control the locations of points in real-time whilst providing the ability to conduct remote visual inspection.
The Geotech Monitoring Station (GMS)
The GMS deployed with real-time monitoring and viewing of data occurring at the system
The GMS conducting monitoring from withing the GMS Shelter
Media Contacts:
GroundProbe Orica
Greer Voysey Andrew Valler
Marketing Manager Senior Manager, Global Marketing Communications
+61 448 970 098 +65 9233 0062
greer.voysey@groundprobe.com andrew.valler@orica.com
About GroundProbe
Established in 2001, GroundProbe has rapidly grown to become a leading provider of safety solutions to the global mining industry. GroundProbe is renowned for its development of the world’s first Slope Stability Radar; a system to monitor mine walls and warn before collapses occur in open pit mines. The company actively assists a global community of mining and infrastructure professionals to make confident, informed decisions to better manage risk, increase productivity, and ensure maximum safety.
GroundProbe serves major mining companies in over 29 countries, and has offices in Australia, North and South America, Asia and Africa. The company employs over 160 staff and 50 support technicians, globally. With a core focus on making mining safer and more productive, GroundProbe’s state-of-the-art technology has detected more than 900 wall failures, and has been awarded with national and international recognition awards for its international product design, innovation, growth, and industry excellence.
GroundProbe is a member of the Orica Group.
For more information, please visit www.groundprobe.com.
