Exyn Technologies and NSS Canada say they have expanded their footprint with Jaguar Mining in response to a growing demand for autonomous robots to capture critical data in complex, GPS-denied environments underground.
Historically, mining in geographically complex areas has been dangerous and intensive in terms of labour, time and cost. The evolution of autonomous aerial robots provides mining companies with faster and safer data capture in critical underground operations leading to more streamlined planning and workflows.
After a successful demonstration at the Caeté mining complex (which includes the Pilar and Roça Grande mines and the Caeté Plant, located in the state of Minas Gerais, Brazil), Jaguar Mining made the decision to purchase Exyn’s autonomous robot, the ExynAero, to be used as a cavity monitoring solution in its underground mining operations.
The ExynAero is a fully autonomous aerial robot that intelligently navigates and maps complex GPS-denied industrial environments without a pilot, keeping employees safe and maximising beyond-line-of-sight-and-communications data collection. Equipped with Autonomy Level 4 – the highest level in the industry, according to Exyn – survey teams can confidently send the ExynAero on autonomous missions into open stopes and and other underground cavities knowing that all computation and data collection is stored on-board. Following this with Exyn’s post-processing pipeline, survey teams can refine, subsample and georeference their data sets for volumetric calculations and other mining operations, it added.
Jaguar, which produces more than 95,000 oz/y of gold, has been using Autonomy Level 4 in this latest deployment, Eyxn confirmed.
“We are thrilled to deliver innovations that help reduce risk to humans and increase efficiency and productivity in mining operations,” Raffi Jabrayan, Exyn’s VP of Commercial Sales and Business Development, said. “Our technology can do in a few minutes what traditionally took hours, with countless risks to surveyors working in potentially dangerous environments.”
Bruno Lalonde, NSS Canada President, added: “NSS Canada is proud to provide innovative solutions to help underground mines like Jaguar Mining Inc safeguard employees while optimising efficiency. The addition of Exyn autonomous solutions will help their team improve OPEX, increase safety and get actionable data from dangerous environments faster.”
Eric Duarte, Vice President of Operations for Jaguar Mining, added: “The introduction of Exyn autonomous technologies at Jaguar Mining is another step towards our commitment to quality, by increasing safety, operational efficiency and cost effectiveness in our underground operations.”
