On the one year anniversary of the launch of the underground drone flight program at Newmont Goldcorp’s Porcupine operations, SafeSight Exploration is celebrating over 100 underground drone flights without incident at the Hoyle Pond mine. Transformation can only be achieved when change is embraced and challenge is met with determination. SafeSight and Newmont Goldcorp have successfully activated and supported an operational underground drone program for the past 12 months.

The program embedded in Hoyle Pond’s survey team has taken LiDAR survey to the next level says SafeSight. Hoyle Pond’s Chief Surveyor, David Poulin, had this to say: “Over the past year our drone program has allowed our survey team to safely increase the speed, accuracy and capacity of our scans while the operator is at a safe distance out of harm’s way”.

The past year fuelled by collaboration between the team at Hoyle Pond and SafeSight has facilitated the formalisation of operational procedures and the supporting technology in Underground Flight. Jamieson McCausland, SafeSight’s Lead Robotics Engineer noted: “Weekly and at times daily flights helped us understand key functional requirements to ensure scans could be delivered in under an hour post flight, so that we didn’t slow down other elements of the value chain.”

As the program heads into year two the expectations are high that this industry leading program will continue to transform the way survey is done industry wide.