During the AIMEX mining exhibition in Sydney, SAFEmine presented Thiess Australia with an award to mark the delivery of the 10,000th SAFEmine unit. Accepting the award, Tony Brand, Machine Guidance Technician of Thiess said: “the relationship between Thiess and SAFEmine is a role model for how good support and interactive fine-tuning to customer needs can lead to a painless implementation of a working collision avoidance system”.Greg Green, Sales Director of SAFEmine (Australia), said: “it is a pleasure to work with Thiess, as Thiess has a very clear idea of what they need and how they want it implemented.”
Luke Schelosky, GM of SAFEmine (Australia), indicated that many other organisations in Australia are seriously looking into, or have already chosen the SAFEmine system. He said: “we are happy that we can make a significant contribution to vehicle safety in surface mines in Australia”.
“Development and successful application of systems that can protect operators from collisions in busy open pit mines has been a major industry focus in recent years, and SAFEmine has been accepted extremely well by surface mines in many countries” added Peter Stegmaier, Chief Marketing & Sales Officer of SAFEmine. “Australia is amongst the most safety conscious countries in the world and we are proud that our customer base, with which we continue to develop extensions and new products, includes Thiess”.
SAFEmine is operational at the Thiess sites Curragh North and Tarong. The Lake Vermont and Mount Owen sites already have a functioning SAFEmine stockpile system and will be part of Thiess’ full roll-out plan together with Burton, South Walker Creek, Wilpinjong, Prominent Hill, Yallourn, and Collinsville.
The deployment at Thiess follows successful installations in mines on four continents owned by Anglo American, Xstrata, BHP, Glencore, Wesfarmers, and various smaller operators.
SAFEmine offers a sophisticated Traffic Awareness and Collision Avoidance System that can provide 360° protection at any speed and in any visibility with a typical range of 500 m. SAFEmine does not require line of sight nor radio or IT infrastructure to function. All SAFEmine products are easy to understand, therefore simplifying training, are compact in size, and are quick and easy to install.
Using smart trajectory prediction algorithms well proven in aviation, SAFEmine has minimised nuisance alarms while offering a cost effective and reliable solution for the mining industry.
In addition to collision avoidance, SAFEmine provides black box recording of all traffic relevant events and routine data, plus an obstacle map which can include additional functionality, such as stop signs, overhead power lines, and blast areas – all of which can be tailored to the individual mines’ requirements and operational parameters.
Recent additions to the SAFEmine product family feature full live monitoring and reporting as well as real-time SMS and e-mail alerts. New SAFEmine options and functions can be implemented without the need to replace existing hardware, thereby protecting previous investments, and will continue to be guided by the SAFEmine philosophy: to provide the most effective information to the operator enabling informed decisions to be made without intruding on normal driving duties.
