Machine guidance is a technology that precisely tracks a machine within a mine to ensure adherence to the mine plan. It gives machine operators and project managers data to stop over digging, under digging, and digging in the wrong location. These uses have ensured machine guidance system’s success in improving mine productivity since mine sites began using it over 20 years ago.
Understanding the big picture
A mine plan is essentially a business plan outlining how to get the most out of the resources of a mine. Combined with a mine design, a project timeline, and budgets, a mine plan lays out the project goals from mine construction to mine production that everyone from the project managers to the machine operators follow.
Machine guidance helps operators understand how their daily workload affects the bigger picture of the mine plan, ensure their work adheres to the mine design, and increase their productivity to the requirements of the project timeline. With machine guidance, machine operators can view data on their performance and develop goals and upskilling strategies to better adhere to the mine design and mine plan with their work.
Mine planners can use machine guidance to explain the mine progress to every operator, from the next five hours to the end of the whole project. Traditional survey-reliant methods included long wait times for surveyors to collect and report back on as-built data, leading to a delay in information about over digging, under digging or digging in the wrong location. With machine guidance, mine planners can accurately provide all the information on the whole job straight to the machine and the operator to act on accordingly.
Developments in machine guidance technology
Machine guidance has evolved since its first use on Australian mines over 20 years ago.
Improvements in machine guidance technology include increasing systems’ data processing capability, visualisation capability, sensing capability, adaptability, and access.
Vital features have been added since the technology’s inception, including:
The ability to access more satellite constellations in newer machine guidance systems leads to greater accuracy and fewer drop outs, enhancing the responsiveness and precision of the solution. Australia is uniquely geographically advantaged with access all constellations including the US-based GPS, Russian GLONASS, Chinese BeiDou and more.
High precision machine guidance systems gives mine managers the information they need with accurate productivity reports including location, volume and type of material moved by each machine, relative to design.
Aptella offers the next level of machine guidance service and support
Aptella offers machine guidance systems for sale and rent, suitable for mine site projects of any size.
When you purchase or rent machine guidance systems from Aptella, you can rest assured that our dedicated technicians will be available to support your needs. With remote support capabilities as well as boots on the ground on-site help across Australia, our technical expertise gives customers the reassurance they need when on-boarding new technology and workflows into their mine. With streamlined machine guidance systems and a technician available for any mine site, Aptella ensures you get return on investment in the shortest possible time frame.
See our range of machine guidance products here, or contact us for an obligation-free quote.
We source, deploy and support intelligent positioning solutions to enhance our customers’ productivity.
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