GroundProbe has extended its comprehensive Slope Stability Radar (SSR) product offering with the release of the SSR-Agilis. Mounted on a vehicle, the SSR-Agilis is designed to be operational in minutes in active areas of mine sites, ensuring the safety of work crews working under high-risk slopes. The company says it fills a need in the tactical monitoring space.
“For many years now, GroundProbe has been tailoring and extending our product range to ensure we cover all bases in terms of customer need,” said GroundProbe’s CEO Brian Gillespie. “Our philosophy is about ensuring we recommend the right type of technology for the often-complex monitoring task at hand, because one size doesn’t fit all. This new system is purpose built for tactical monitoring; a fully-mobile and completely self-contained model of the industry’s most trusted and well-respected technology,” Gillespie said.
GroundProbe commercialised the first Slope Stability Radar in 2001 and is a world leader in real-time, sub-millimetre deformation monitoring. Since the first SSR, it has continued to reinvent the technology, ensuring it says that each iteration and addition is reliable, accurate and fit for purpose. The SSR-Agilis is a 3D Real Aperture Radar that provides unique measurements that are less susceptible to contamination, crucial for safety-critical monitoring in high traffic work areas.
GroundProbe’s VP of Technology Lachlan Campbell said: “In high-risk active areas with heavy machinery and limited deployment options, pixel independence is crucial. To say it simply, with a 3D dish-radar, if the beam is pointing at the wall it measures the wall, and when it is pointing at a truck only that one pixel is affected. With Synthetic Aperture Radar like our SSR-SARx or others in the market, a truck can contaminate a much broader area, which is why we didn’t choose SAR for this application.”
One of GroundProbe’s founders and current COO Dr David Noon said: “The safety record of Real Aperture Radars remains unblemished after more than 18 years of use, which is unmatched compared to all other slope stability monitoring technologies.”
The system is a completely self-contained unit, requiring no Wi-Fi, site communications or mine power to conduct monitoring, and features a range of warnings and alerts – local, remote and personal – that ensure evacuation in the shortest possible time if movement is detected. “Tested and proven, SSR-Agilis systems are already in-pit and in operation, helping our customers continue to work safely and efficiently.”
Since the release of the SSR-SARx in 2015, GroundProbe says it has prided itself on being the only radar technology agnostic company in the market; and it says the only vendor in the world that offers all Slope Stability Radar technology solutions – 3D Real Aperture Radar, 2D Real Aperture Radar and 2D Synthetic Aperture Radar. “This radar technology agnostic nature allows GroundProbe to tailor monitoring solutions specific to customers’ needs and the addition of the SSR-Agilis further deepens this position.”