a reply to:
Rosinitiate
Im trying to find something that will do pretty much what i outlined out of the box. I have the software lined up. Im either going to go with Pix4D or
Agisoft. I was told from another company that agisoft is more user friendly. Does most of the photo stitching itself. From the drone having a base
point or control point, the software reads the drones internals for the height and flight distance and some other factors to basically spit out aerial
trig.
Both programs state that the better the photo resolution, the more detailed information it will give me. inhad a company come to the mine Today to
show me exactly what the software does. They took the drone up to 150 meters, had a predetermined flight path mapped out in mission planner. MP used
bing imagery to set way points for the flight path.
Once the survey was done we went to my office and dumped the data into their lap top.
From their we calculated the volume of ore on our live stock pile.with the info from the stitched pictures in Agisoft. That was previously unheard
of, because our live stock pile is under the crusher conveyor. So if anyone ever wanted to find out how much crushed tonnes were there, they would
have to stop production. So by me just having this test survey done today was a great feat so to speak.
The accuracy of it is amazing, down to +/- 8%. where as a survey done by a rover GPS , has close to a 30% +/- because humans always miss or leave
something out. And when the survey is not a symetrical pile, its even less.
I also inquired about a night vision drone for going underground with. .. Maybe even a low light camera would do.
Right now we use a CMS unit. Which is a Cavity Monitoring Survey. Its a rod with a laser scanner that has a 360 view. It traces out the entire cavity
by adjusting the laser by 3%. Its a very costly procedure. With the scanner itself having a dollar value of $100,000. If a chunk of lose comes down on
it, the costs involved become stupid lol. So i want to replace the CMS with a low cost drone to go into the unsupported stopes. Even standing by the
opening to the stope, your putting your life on the line.
Last year my friend Pascal, got killed by falling rock in the stope he was operating his scoop in here.
I think if i could have seen how the stability of the stope was, i could have prevented his death by shutting the stope down.
So now my focus is on finding a way to make sure my guys get home to their Families after each shift.