By Peter Wan, principal advisor mining, Teck Resources Ltd., Evan Trickey, Neptec Technologies Corp., Dan Lucifora, project lead, Peck Tech Consulting Ltd., and Andrew Scott, Barrick Gold Corp.
Neptec has developed an obscurant-penetrating LiDAR (OPAL) sensor technology tat overcomes the limitations faced by traditional LiDAR sensors when operating in dusty environments; as well as advanced 3-D real-time intelligence (3DRi) data processing algorithms that enable the real-time exploitation of 3-D data from sensors on moving vehicles.
Working with Teck Resources and Barrick Gold, Neptec is adapting the OPAL and 3DRi technology to mining applications. This paper highlights a number of real-time OPAL/3DRi based mining applications demonstrating how this technology overcomes the limitations of traditional LiDAR to provide a real-time machine vision solution that supports mine machine autonomy.