Drones take productivity to new heights

In the face of one of the biggest downturns in the industry, cash-strapped miners and explorers are turning to unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV), or drone, technology as one way to help drive down costs, boost productivity and harness safety at their sites.

Mounted with high-definition cameras, these flying androids can create an elevation model of a pit or stockpile at a fraction of the time and cost it would take for a surveyor to complete the same task with handheld GPS.

Alternatively, they can fly into uncharted wilderness and return in 45 minutes with over 10 sq. km. of imagery data that the geologist can use to zero in on their next new deposit.

For Isaac Fage, president of GroundTruth Exploration — a service provider of drone technology based in Dawson City, Yukon — the applications for these new millennial “birds” are really just starting to take off.

“The technology is advancing very quickly,” he says during an interview with Mining Trends & Developments. “One year in drone time is like 10 years of normal time, and new applications are popping up all the time. Who knows where it’ll go but it’s fun to think about the possibilities.”

According to a new report from Markets and Research, the global UAV market is expected to reach US$5.6 billion by 2020, with a compound annual growth rate at a whopping 32.2%. Among all of its commercial applications — some ranging from law enforcement, surveying and retail uses — precision agriculture is expected to grow the highest with a forecasted rate of 42.5%.

Loosening government regulations on its commercial applications in major countries such as the United States is also fostering the acceleration, says the report.

Meanwhile in Canada, drones are permitted to fly under a 400-ft. ceiling as long as it remains a safe distance away from airports, buildings, people or animals and fits within certain weight restrictions.

Permitting becomes more difficult the larger, and heavier the drone becomes — which is is partly why geophysical surveys, such as Lidar, electromagnetic and magnetics, have yet to go automated.

Fage says that his company focuses on using the drones to collect high-resolution image data, which he explains isn’t rocket science, yet is far more accurate and efficient than what’s obtained from traditional sources such as orbiting satellites.

“It’s kind of like standard aerial photography but the detail is so much greater,” he explains. “The drone flies along parallel flight lines and collects overlapping photos, and from that you can build this really amazing looking, three-dimensional mosaic where a thousand photos essentially becomes one.”

He explains that each pixel has a three dimensional coordinate, with an accuracy ranging down to a 3 cm horizontal and 5 cm vertical. And after some processing, the data can be transformed into a variety of datasets including geo-referenced two-dimensional orthomosaics along with three dimensional digital elevation models and contour sets.

“For a mission that’s a few square kilometres the final data would be 5 to 10 gigabytes in size,” he says. “But we can distill that down into more of a user friendly way for people wanting to use it as a base map or integrate it with a normal GIS program without comprising the quality or detail.”

Arming GroundTruth’s fleet is Senseflys “Ebee” model drone — a slick-looking, bird-shaped craft made mostly of a durable foam, boasting a 80 cm wingspan and weighing in at a mere 1.5 lbs.

On the ground, Fage uploads a designated flight path, or “mission,” to the drone’s onboard autopilot, instructing the android where it has to go to collect a photo with its 18.2-megapixel Sony camera.

It takes three shakes to activate the drone’s electric motor, he says, and within moments the craft can be cruising at speeds up to 90 km per hour, making minor adjustments to compensate for any sudden gusts just to stay on course.

And should there be any last minute changes to the flight plan, Fage says that the data can be relayed to the drone via a radio transmission link it has onboard.

“Ground control isn’t necessary, they run autonomously, and that’s the really cool part of these machines,” he says. “They know where they need to go to get an image, and they’ll make dozens of adjustments just to get there even if it’s gusting up to 45 km per hour.”

Drones are also becoming increasingly popular in the mining space, with big name miners such as Barrick Gold (TSX: ABX; NYSE: ABX), Teck Resources (TSX: TCK.B; NYSE: TCK), and Fortescue Metals Group (ASX: FMG) jumping on board with the technology.

Anaconda Mining (TSX: ANX; US-OTC: ANXGF) also settled on purchasing a $30,000 drone from SmartPlanes for its Pine Cove gold mine, 6 km northeast of the town of Baie Verte in north-central Newfoundland, and so far the investment has more than paid for itself.

“Every month we need to survey the open-pit and a number of our stockpiles so we had surveyors walking around collecting thousands of GPS points,” Gordana Slepcev, manager of technical services for Anaconda, says during an interview. “It used to take two days and as you can imagine it was quite costly for us, but with the drone we can complete the survey in a half-hour at a fraction of the cost.”

She says another big value-add is having the drone monitor and calculate the volume of its tailings pond facility, and assist with exploration across its land package.

But the biggest savings for the company has been slashing the risks and improving the safety of their employees as they operate within the mine site.

“What people don’t talk about enough is how this technology is improving the safety of workers in the industry,” she says. “The drones eliminate the need for people to be in places that are hazardous, such as around tailings or high-walls, and that in itself is excellent.”

— This article appeared in the November 2015 issue of Mining Trends & Developments magazine.