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An eye in the mine: Hindustan Zinc using drones underground to dig deep

HZL is currently using line-of-sight drones while it waits to try fully autonomous drones by next year

Photo: Shutterstock
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Photo: Shutterstock

Jayajit Dash Bhubaneswar
Sometime in 2017, drones flew through the Cannington silver and lead mine in Northwest Queensland, Australia. The drones came from Emesent, an Australian firm that pioneered the use of drone survey in underground mines, and offers a technology called Hoverman with functions such as collision avoidance, GPS-denied flight (in areas without GPS) and SLAM (Simultaneous Localisation and Mapping)-based LiDAR (Light Detection & Ranging) mapping.

What started in Australia two years ago, has now been introduced in India. In July 2019, the Vedanta Group-owned metals and mining major Hindustan Zinc Ltd (HZL) began deploying drones in its underground mines in Rajasthan to

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