Tata Steel's Noamundi iron mine conducts pilot launch of DAMM

Noamundi Iron Mine (NIM) of OMQ (ore, mines & quarries) division of Tata Steel today announced that it has executed a pilot launch of drone application in mine monitoring (DAMM).
With this, NIM has become the first mine in the country to introduce drone in mine monitoring, a statement issued here said.
"We have initiated mining surveillance system using space technology along with a mobile app. This will help in stopping illegal mining, monitoring mining plan, production, dispatch and royalty payment. We requested Tata Steel to demonstrate it in Noamundi iron mine," Secretary, Ministry of Mines Balvinder Kumar said.
Drone technology is one of the emerging technologies in the digital world. It has immense scope, where large area monitoring and exploration activities are involved. The technology provides access to areas, which are difficult and unsafe to humans, the statement said.

This technology also provides scope in mining applications categorically towards mining surveillance, mines survey, geotech investigation, forestry survey, dump management, pit development and mine reclamation.
"Tata Steel has embarked on the digital journey to leverage benefits of the latest changes in this field. We are trying to keep pace with the global trends of digitalisation in mining industry and this is a step towards that. This technology of mine monitoring through drone will help us address adequately any bottleneck on the ground with responsive mine administration," Rajeev Singhal, Vice President (Raw Materials), Tata Steel said.

Pankaj Satija, General Manager (OMQ), Tata Steel said, "This is one of the initiatives towards being digital. It will be useful for mine monitoring, environment monitoring, lease boundary inspection, reclamation and rehabilitation also."

The objective of this application at Noamundi is surveillance of mining area, lease boundary inspection, inspection of safety zone, counting vegetation in reclaimed area and quarry and dump profiling for volume calculations. This trial of DAMM at NIM is being conducted by Skylark Drones, a Bengaluru-based firm. Skylark Drones specialises in drone application in various industries.
OMQ Division aims to work smarter and use innovations like autonomous vehicles, Internet of Things (IoT), big data, analytics, remote control centers, predictive maintenance with prime focus on safety.