One of the mining industry’s biggest concerns is workforce and asset safety. Leading deployer of 4G/5G private networks Ambra Solutions says that it was built on the premise that while any company prioritises employee security above anything else, in mining, the obstacle to an optimally safe and efficient mine has been the fact that in many cases the tools and the technology don’t exist yet.
For Ambra, 2023 marks an impressive milestone with the completion of its iPS (intelligent positioning system). Ambra’s team is launching the real-time 3D visualisation interface. It states: “This new addition to the company’s solutions brings the networks created by Ambra to be completely independent and even while increasing mines’ safety and productivity, two outcomes that are usually hard to achieve together.”
A recurring issue with the majority of industrial networks, even 4G and 5G, is the reliability of the connectivity. Very few businesses can provide a turnkey solution while also overseeing all the creation and deployment process. Ambra Solutions’ goal was to have extensive control over the hardware and the software, inherently giving Ambra and the client complete autonomy and full governance over the network, its components, and its data, therefore overcoming the aforementioned connectivity issues. “While reducing the costs of the overall solution, minimising the need for outsourcing greatly increases the networks reliability by allowing almost immediate troubleshooting and access to the solution and the knowledge.”
Ambra had already developed an iPS allowing mines to track their assets in real-time, but it only provided the data. The 3D visualisation interface provides a map with all of the open-pit or underground mines’ features and shows every asset’s position in real-time. “But above all, it gives Ambra the power to integrate without any technological uncertainties and derive maximum value from the data they manage. More specifically, the the iPS solution allows integration of data from other systems, integration with third party technologies (VOD, other location equipment vendor, etc), auto-creation of unsurveyed or drawn maps, high accuracy positioning in real time and review travel history.”
“Being able to see exactly where all of the workers are in one glance greatly decreases reaction time in the event of an emergency. For example, if the mine needs to be evacuated quickly, supervisors can look at the map and immediately see if there is one or more workers still in the tunnels without having to comb through the data charts which gives him the authority to react as quickly as possible,” explains David Arcand, Software Engineer at Ambra Solutions.
All in all, Ambra’s iPS focuses on 3 technological pillars : positioning and asset-tracking, fleet telemetry and a Big Data system which it says together, they generate a new form of mining: smart mining.