Emesent Hovermap is empowering faster, smarter emergency response in underground mines.
Mining companies across the world are turning to Emesent to help them better understand their underground mines.
Emesent Hovermap empowers drones to autonomously navigate stopes, tunnels and vertical shafts to map complex and GPS-denied environments, removing people from hazardous areas while providing accurate, high-resolution 3D data.
This mapping informs the planning of an underground mine, where convergence monitoring, blast optimisation and stope design, to name a few variables, are critical to setting up an operation.
In fact, there are more than 25 ways to use Hovermap in an underground mine. And while many of these are production-focused, there are also safety applications, with monitoring and emergency response becoming increasingly important capabilities.
“Hovermap data can be used to detect early signs of convergence or movement in the ground, which can help prevent dangerous rock falls,” Emesent co-founder and chief strategy officer Stefan Hrabar told Australian Mining.
“But if an incident was to occur – whether there’s a fall of ground or somebody is trapped – a Hovermap-enabled drone can, without putting humans at risk, be sent underground and collect 3D data as it flies. This helps responders understand what’s happened and informs rescue planning.”
Hrabar discussed various cases around the world where Hovermap has been used for safety purposes. This includes mines in Australia, the US, Canada and Sweden.
A fall of ground incident in a Canadian mine trapped several miners. A Hovermap-enabled drone was sent in to map the area without risking lives, with the 3D data used to plan the rescue.
“Following the incident, Hovermap flights were conducted, providing an up-to-date 3D map of the fall of ground area. This helped rescuers understand what they were getting themselves into, and where their access points were,” Hrabar said. “The drone’s lights came within view of the trapped miners, giving them hope that help was on the way, and they were rescued soon after.”
A second fall of ground incident occurred at an underground mine in Iowa, US, within the same week. Luckily nobody was trapped, but sending in surveyors or geotechs to assess the extents of the damage was risky, so Hovermap was used instead.
Hrabar said that previously captured 3D data was used for risk assessment and to plan autonomy missions to re-map the area.
“While the client had 3D data of a fall of ground from a couple of years ago, when the recent incident happened, they didn’t know the extent of the new fall of ground,” Hrabar said.
“So they did a couple of flights. The first one was from the surface and travelled about one kilometre underground, which gave them confidence that it was safe to walk down and set up for another flight.
“After a few flights, Hovermap was able to determine the outline of the new fall of ground, where several areas had collapsed. Mapping was able to show the client the extent of the incident without putting anyone at risk.”
Hovermap technology, which is constantly evolving to meet growing demand from the mining industry, now also has the capability to complete ‘exploration’, which sees a drone able to explore without pre-loaded waypoints.
“Up until now, Hovermap has required an operator to firstly set waypoints to guide the autonomous flight,” he said.
“For this, the operator still needs to interact with Hovermap and have a rough idea of the environment to inform the flight path.
“Exploration, on the other hand, removes this requirement. Operators don’t need to set waypoints; they can just provide a rough bounding box and Hovermap will explore and map as much as it can within the designated volume.”
Only when Hovermap has run out of battery or can’t physically progress any further will the drone return to base.
Operators can access and review detailed LiDAR (light detection and ranging) insights soon after Hovermap completes its journey. Emesent’s Aura software platform can then produce rich 3D data to inform a range of mine planning applications.
The exploration feature can also be critical for rescue missions.
“By not having to set waypoints, rescue teams don’t have to be as precise about planning the autonomous flight,” Hrabar said. “The environment might have changed underground without their knowing, such as a fall of ground, so it’s much easier to set a bounding box and let the drone explore inaccessible areas itself.”
Hovermap’s exploration insights can then inform an immediate rescue mission and prepare mining companies for future incidents.
By removing people from hazardous environments while generating high-quality 3D data, Emesent Hovermap not only strengthens operational planning but also safeguards workers in critical moments.
Its role in convergence monitoring, stope design, and blast optimisation is matched by its growing importance in emergency response, where timely insights can mean the difference between risk and rescue.
This feature appeared in the October issue of Australian Mining magazine.