Written by Hans Wahlquist, VP Strategic Product Management and Business Development at Mobilaris Mining & Civil Engineering
Do you remember the 80’s top hit “Love Is All Around“? You do not…? Well, it comes to mind when I think about all the solutions and products in the Mobilaris Mining Intelligence™ product portfolio. Even as most of the products focus on productivity and increased efficiency, they are interconnected and designed to make mines safer. If you start look closely, you will see that Safety is all around!
Awareness is safety
Let us start with the Mobilaris Situational Awareness™ application. By visualizing the mine in real-time on a 3D-map, we can increase safety by a lot. Should that truck with visitors really be going into an unsafe area? Aren´t the number of workers in that part of the mine too many due to the ventilation capacity? Are there any people still left underground, or can we execute the blast operation?
Well, the examples go on and on. Simply put, awareness is safety!
Awareness should not only be a value for the control room. We want to give situational awareness to everyone underground. Today, we are offering every miner the ability to visualize the whole mine from their smartphone. Mobilaris PocketMine™, is a mobile platform tool that not only offers personal situational awareness but also information and notifications from systems. In the event of a mine evacuation, the application allows you to navigate to any of the three closest refuge chambers by the click of a button.
Smooth traffic flows
We all know how stressful it can be to drive in a dark narrow tunnel. Will I meet a heavy mine truck by the corner or will I make it to the next parking bay? With the new Mobilaris Onboard™ solution, stressful situations are memories of the past. Drivers and operators can get a “radar” view, showing incoming traffic kilometers away. This feature is called Traffic Awareness, and it gives drivers the information needed to make traffic safe and efficient. It is also proven to reduce the stress among drivers and make unplanned stops (due to incoming traffic) vanish. During an evacuation, drivers can navigate to any of the three closest refuge chambers at the press of a button.
The power of automation
So, when we are aware about the current situation and incoming traffic, what is next? Given that the Mobilaris product family becomes a natural hub of information; location, machine status, traffic situations, shift-plan status, there should be ways to automize mines. Therefore, we have created the Mobilaris Event Automation™, a product based on the IBM Node-RED™ platform.
With this, mining engineers can create automation scenarios such as Ventilation on Demand by simple graphical “drag and drop” actions. This allows for a high degree of automated safety mechanisms. Imagine associating an area, a geofence, with the readings of a certain gas-sensor. If the reading is over a dangerous level, an automated message can be sent to anyone via Mobilaris PocketMine or Mobilaris Onboard. Moreover, imagine a geofence that is associated to a workplace where a heavy mining machine is operating. When a miner accidently tries to enter the workplace area, the miner can be notified via Mobilaris Mobile Apps or a flashing red light by the entrance. The examples of how to create safety with event automation are numerous.
Take control of emergencies
What about the most dangerous situations? Well, for these situations we have our specific product called the Mobilaris Emergency Support™. It has been proven in “battle” many times, at emergency drills as well as real emergencies. By using this application, our customers have dramatically reduced the time for an evacuation. Before, the “who-is-where” and “who-is-safe” phases could take an hour. Now this is done within a second. From early days alarms to the time when everyone was in safety could take 30 minutes. Now, with Emergency Support, smart tags, PocketMine and Onboard, a complete evacuation takes only about 9 minutes!
What is next for us?
We have just now launched our second generation of the Mobilaris Emergency Support™ which has a series of new important features. We can now dispatch emergency messages and get acknowledgements from miners via our Mobilaris Virtual Tag™ and Mobilaris Cap Lamp Tag™. This makes it possible for us to offer turn-key emergency support solutions. Then add things like automated warnings, rapid refuge chamber navigation, digital signage screens, emergency messages and I hope you do agree that this comprises a wide safety portfolio.
At Mobilaris Mining & Civil Engineering, we always put safety as our number one priority. To get everyone back home safely every day is our mantra. To test and develop our features together with close partners such as the Swedish mining company Boliden is very important, efficient, and part of our regular work.
Be safe out there!
Author:
Hans Wahlquist, VP Strategic Product Management & Business Development at Mobilaris Mining & Civil Engineering
hans.wahlquist@test.mobilaris.se
+46 70 534 88 62