A comprehensive review on application of drone, virtual reality and augmented reality with their application in dragline excavation monitoring in surface mines

Abstract

Application of drone technology combined with LiDAR and Virtual Reality/Augmented Reality in surface mining operational optimization is growing on a high trajectory. The mining sector has demonstrated increased interest in using drones for everyday tasks such as bench face mapping, dump planning, dragline dump disposal as per balance diagram in surface mining. One of the key requirements in dragline mining is the application of 3-dimensional mapping of the dragline dump area and dump space management for the dragline dump in a safe and efficient manner. The drone can assist in judicious disposal of a dump near the dragline bench mining keeping in mind the available dump/pit space and slope stability requirements. This research article presents a review of drone technology and how LiDAR and Virtual Reality/Augmented Reality Technology based on cloud computing architecture can accelerate the mine planning activity for dragline dump disposal for a simple side cast mining method. Furthermore, it discusses the current applications of AI-driven 3D computer vision techniques in automating data analytics with point clouds for the extraction of terrain parameters and plan efficient dump disposal strategies by proper positioning of dragline in a large surface mine.