Autonomous mining vehicles
Real time navigation and positioning in GNSS-denied, hazardous mining environments
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Autonomy in mining applications
- Reducing human operators is a key objective in the mining industry owing to the associated safety and productivity benefits.
- Automation promises to deliver these outcomes across underground, open surface and in-situ mining applications.
- Through automation, a single engineer could oversee numerous vehicles and operations from a control room, rather than multiple engineers operating in hazardous environments.
- With an OxTS inertial navigation system (INS) haulage and other autonomous mining vehicles can drive and operate, even in the GNSS-denied environments of underground mines.
Navigating the challenges of mining environments
To achieve the safety, productivity and cost benefits of introducing a fleet of autonomous mining vehicles, your navigation solution need to:
Maximise satellite coverage at every point of any planned path
- Two multi-constellation, multi-frequency RTK GNSS receivers support aiding from the four main GNSS constellations: GPS, GLONASS, Galileo, and Beidou.
- OxTS’ ix/single-satellite aiding technology makes sure that each and every visible satellite is blended into the navigation solution for the most accurate solution possible – even in the harshest GNSS conditions.
Minimise time without RTK after temporary interruption
- OxTS’ gx/RTK inertial relock technology uses inertial measurements to reduce RTK reacquisition time from up to 20 seconds, to around five, after every interruption from tunnels and other mining infrastructure.
Build in redundancy with ease
- Any sensor that can provide position, velocity, acceleration and/or heading updates can be integrated at speed, via the OxTS generic aiding interface, to enhance the navigation solution and bridge the gap during prolonged GNSS interruptions.
Seamlessly integrate
with wider architecture
Building OxTS components into large, complex systems is quick and easy with:
- Ethernet and CAN data interfaces
- Digital PPS for time synchronisation and PTP support
- A ROS2 driver available for data decoding
Post-process data
- OxTS post-processing engine offers forwards/backwards combined processing with advanced smoothing technology to create the most optimised data possible, taking advantage of being able to see the whole picture.
- This optimised data can be used to improve your ground truth reference for localisation during vehicle development, or for georeferencing sensor data for map creation.
- Post-processing your data also gives you the ability to correct any mistakes made on the configuration or to chop sections of data out if they were logged in error, saving time and effort on data collection overall.
Navigation components
High-performance solutions for development, validation and volume production of autonomous mining vehicles.
Software and Plugins
Our software solutions support the use of OxTS products delivering key functionality including configuration, data display, analysis and manipulation as well as post-processing.
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