Russian diamond mining company Severalmaz, a subsidiary of State-owned Alrosa, is testing unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) for mine surveying of land objects at Europe’s largest primary diamond deposit at Lomonosov.
Preliminary results from the UAV testing, which involved a quadcopter and an aeroplane, indicate that mine surveying could be done faster, safer and at a high survey accuracy.
Using a Geoscan 401 Geodesy quadcopter and Geoscan 101 Geodesy aircraft for mine and geodetic surveying, Severalmaz surveyed the openpit mine, dump, ore storages and other bulked land objects. In a flight time of 2 hours, 40 minutes, a total area of 3 km2 was surveyed. To accomplish the assigned tasks, UAVs flew a total of about 100 km.
Severalmaz says the use of drones made the survey much faster, compared with traditional laser scanning. For one of the objects the duration of work was reduced from 115 minutes to 65 minutes and it significantly improved safety.
“We still need to do an in-depth analysis of the results, but preliminary estimates show that the use of drones for mine and geodetic surveying can be very promising,” comments Severalmaz chief engineer Igor Ivanov.
The UAVs involved in the tests are designed specifically for mine and geodetic surveying and require no special modification.