Internationally recognised engineering business MIRA – which has specialist unmanned ground vehicle (UGV) expertise – is now actively promoting its proprietary UGV system MACE to the operators of major mining facilities as an effective countermeasure to safety and security threats. MIRA believes that UGVs designed specifically to deal with dirty, difficult and dangerous tasks make them an ideal surface-based solution for dealing with the real threats faced by mine workers and mining companies in some countries and locations.
MIRA’s Senior Global Sales Manager for UGV systems, Rob Mohacsi, comments: “The scale of commercial mines and their inherently dangerous surface environment means that UGVs – which not only deploy resources more efficiently but remove people from harm’s way – offer a highly robust and effective means of enhancing safety and security. Add to this, the geopolitical, military and economic factors faced by mine operators in many countries we believe that MACE – which was developed for the Ministry of Defence and is mission-proven in Afghanistan – becomes a very useful tool when patrolling security perimeters in order to protect both infrastructure and people.”
MACE, which stands for MIRA Autonomous Control Equipment, has the potential to turn any vehicle into one which can be operated remotely and autonomously from a central location up to 20 km away – enabling the movement of people and mine vehicles as well as security perimeters to be monitored using an array of mobile surveillance technology individually tailored to suit the task.
Controlling the vehicle remotely through a purpose built operations desk removes personnel from potentially dangerous situations and ensures the highly efficient use of resources – since it enables 24/7 operation, dead ground surveillance and greater distances to be patrolled without shift changeovers necessitating a return to base.
When applying its MACE technology in a surveillance and protection role, MIRA calls the resulting product ‘Guardsman’ – though there is no one size fits all approach and a range of vehicle platforms and on-board surveillance options can be applied. Rob Mohacsi added: “Flexibility of integration means MACE is an extremely cost effective UGV solution, particularly when you consider that MIRA can meet customers’ every need – from the design, specification and build of a tailored UGV solution, to driver training and in-the-field service support.”