Innovation for underground mining
AUSTRALIAN mining equipment manufacturer Roobuck specialises in electronics, mechanical, hardware and software design and systems integration for the resources industry.
Head of business engagement and OVERwatch projects manager David Forshaw said the company is proud of its innovation and high quality standards for customers.
“We supply to many mining companies including Australia’s largest underground mine, BHP Olympic Dam in South Australia, and to Australia’s most automated mine, Northparkes Mines, and the world’s second largest copper and gold mine, Rio Tinto’s Oyu Tolgoi (OT) Mine, Mongolia,” he said.
“Our wide range of products include intrinsically safe miners’ caplamps for coal mines, flameproof truck lights, as well as WiFi tracking systems for underground mines.”
The company’s innovative research and development team have created the unique Cordless Miners Caplamp as well as the OVERwatch WiFi tracking system for underground mines and LED PPE products.
All of Roobuck’s LED PPE products are certified in Explosion Proof, Intrinsically Safe and Encapsulated (IECEx) in Group I for coal mine and Group II for petrochemical environments, Group III for explosive dust and with some certified in MSHA for American coal mines and SAAB (IA Certificate) for South Africa mines.
The RN4E-WR1 Cordless Wireless Tracking Caplamp is purpose designed for underground hardrock mines, operating in a Wireless Access in Vehicular Environments (WAVE) network and a wi-fi network solution for the purposes of personnel safety, productivity monitoring and emergency management.
Smart Software
Roobuck has developed OVERwatch, which is a comprehensive wireless ‘Eco-system’ operating on a mine’s existing Cisco CCX compatible wi-fi backhaul or conventional network using Roobuck’s location engine and is custom designed for underground mines for tracking, emergency management, zone management, traffic management, IoT platform and other applications.
“This network includes a wi-fi controller, APs, and location engine to compute tag locations. A mine scope out will be conducted to ensure coverage and develop a customized solution to meet a mine’s budget,” Mr Forshaw said.
“The OVERwatch “Smart Trak™ Management Software” is a complete enterprise application that provides location information visualisation, 2 or 3D mapping, reporting, handling of alerts for emergency management.”
Roobuck’s Smart Trak software provides a user interface via a standard web browser and is therefore accessible via any type of device including handheld devices (tablets) and smartphones via the Smart Trak application.
In 2019 the company has been developing various wi-fi terminal devices to be integrated into OVERwatch, with the following OVERwatch systems and devices to be released over two stages.
Stage one will include the release of multi-function IECEx LED/symbology traffic sign, gas monitors, runway LED lights for escaping, symbology (CABA locations, traffic signs, escape paths, dangerous areas, and customized symbols), oil condition real-time monitoring as well as vehicle tablet software.
Stage two of the software development expected in 2020 will expand even further into collision awareness for V2P, V2I and V2V, tunnel traffic control (for T-junctions, tunnel bends, long tunnels, and blind spots) as well as a vehicular network (802.11p) and an artificial intelligence tool on demand to site-specific specifications.