Mines are no strangers to technology. Consider the canary: an early warning system against lethal and odourless gas leaks. The art of digging resources out of the dirt has also spurred the evolution of explosives, engineering and heavy machinery, to name a few.
Modern mines are no less technological. Despite a leaning towards the conservative, today's industry already takes advantage of several advanced innovations, such as boulder-busting with water injections and airborne gravimetry, which detects masses through measuring fluctuations in gravity. Yet even with such context, would you ever associate mining with video games?
This is something I wonder about while sitting in a boardroom in Sandton, at the offices of Cyest Analytics. A division of the Cyest Corporation, it specialises in advising the mining industry through the use of data. Its team, led by Andreas Cambitsis, is about to demonstrate a new level in mining planning, design and management - all through the revival of an old technology.
Data in three dimensions
"There is a fundamental issue with data growing exponentially. But the rate of economic returns on data is dismal. Our goal is simple: to help drive those returns on data, to get more out of investment in data," he says. "Decision-makers need actionable insights that lead to good decisions. To do justice to all of this analysis, we need to go beyond the traditional ways of displaying data, such as PowerPoint, pivot tables or graphs; 3D/VR is one significant avenue to deliver that."
Virtual Reality (VR) headsets have been around for a while. Its early pioneers created prototypes in the 1960s, although VR's first shot at practical fame came in the '90s. Unfortunately, bulky components, low-resolution screens and underpowered computers could not produce the results that would beguile a buying public.
In principle, VR is a simple concept: by placing small screens over a user's eyes, they are transported to a virtual environment. Unlike Augmented Reality (AR), VR does not overlay the real world with virtual ones. Powered by the Oculus Rift and its peers, including low-fi solutions such as Google Cardboard, VR takes over completely. Those digital landscapes would be associated traditionally with video games, but at Cyest, I was experiencing something completely different.
I had only been down a mine once - many decades ago during a school field trip. Now I've returned, only without the noise or claustrophobia. A VR headset takes me back underground, without leaving the boardroom. I move around with the help of a game controller, but I can look around as if I'm actually there.
]The visuals are not particularly detailed, but this is not a fantasy breakaway. It's a demonstration of VR's ability for mine designers and managers to get their hands dirty without even leaving the office. Through this interface, they can view the shaft layouts, plan routes and delve into the many intricacies that create a mine.
"The value for the mines is that before they go and invest significant dollars in standard models for how the mine will operate, they can simulate and do many more permutations and combinations of their assumptions to truly come up with a realistic interpretation of how the operation will run," says Scott McGowan, Global Mining Practice director at Wipro. "In broader terms of where they are using the technology, it's in the project feasibility phase: are they really going to get the money they predict from such a large investment?"
This is made apt by the next demonstration: a deep surface scan of a future mine site, overlaid with the CAD designs for the shafts. Although I am alone in the demonstration, it can support multiple people with VR headsets collaborating over the model. In a third and truly breathtaking demonstration, I am sitting at a virtual boardroom table - only the table is a 3D map of an open pit mine. Small mining trucks roll across its many paths, data that contributes to planning routes.
Got it? We can scan it
VR in industry is not new. Ford has been using the technology since 2000 to design its cars. People can virtually sit in the vehicles or walk around them to inspect every angle. But, today, VR is much cheaper and accessible enough to make sense for use in other industries.
Yet it's that sourcing of the data that is making the bigger difference. Last year, archaeologists upended nearly every theory about Stonehenge. By combining surface Xray scans and high-resolution aerial photos (a practice called photogrammetry), a massive complex of buildings that once stood in the area was discovered - and all without lifting a hand of dirt.
The value for the mines is they can simulate their assumptions to truly come up with a realistic interpretation of how the operation will run.
Scott McGowan, Wipro
Mining operations have been using the same techniques, but the real change was a dramatic drop in cost. Whereas once gathering a little data was expensive, now collecting troves of the stuff is cheap. Even scanning technologies that have remained costly, such as laser-radar (LIDAR) scans, have found a new appeal thanks to the intelligence they can deliver.
One sector that has seen this change is the surveyor industry. Sitting in the offices of Initio Africa, I talk to their marketing manager, Sven Van Duffelen. Plainly dressed and sporting a rugged beard, he followed in his father's footsteps of quantifying landscapes. But the industry has expanded from making painstaking observations through a level scope. Today, 3D scanners can draw in hundreds of thousands of reference points every second, all through a device that can fit in a suitcase. It has resulted in survey savings of nearly 60 percent and opened many doors.
"3D laser scanning has almost created a new sub industry where you don't need a huge amount of formal training. If you understand the software and the principles, it's very simple," says Van Duffelen.
He gives an example of this change: recently, Initio Africa was hired - first as a proof of concept, then dozens more locations - to scan the interiors of a bank's branches. These scans were used to document and plan the spaces, including furniture and fittings. With a 3D scan of a room, a designer can virtually redesign it. Other sectors that are embracing this include maintenance surveys of building exteriors and comparative scans on cars to look for damage.
Might I one day have a portable scanner on my keyring and digitise any space as I see fit? Van Duffelen is not too convinced - modern 3D scanners are sophisticated pieces of equipment and far from being commoditised on a consumer level. But the case for renting vs. buying scanners is not as clear-cut as it used to be.
"Many of our clients in the plant field aren't limited to one facility. Facility maintenance companies that look after many sites continually go around to scan sites and keep records accurate to the millimetre. In some of those cases, owning instead of renting makes more economic sense."
Minecraft
This ability to collect 3D data easily has boosted VR's business appeal. Facebook paid $2 billion for the Oculus Rift, because it believes we will do far more in those devices than play games. VR may be tomorrow's interactive benchmark: Mark Zuckerberg has called immersive 3D the next step for interaction and staked at least some of his company's future on that, aiming to sell a billion Rifts. Yes, a billion.
But for companies like Cyest, the real and more immediate appeal is a technology that helps make sense out of data. It adopted VR not for its futurism, but because it makes certain concepts a lot easier to bring across. They are not even outliers: mining giant Anglo American has been making strides in adopting VR. Recently, its subsidiary Kumba Iron Ore co-sponsored a new virtual reality mine design centre at the University of Pretoria to the collective tune of R50 million.
"Our need has been to stop making small continual changes in technology, by bringing about change that leapfrogs us into a different space," Jeannette McGill, head of Technology and Innovation at Anglo American Platinum, said while promoting an episode of Standard Bank and Business Day's Growth Engines series on the topic. "This is about being collaborative and comparing ourselves not only with other mining companies, but also about seeing what impacts other sectors as far as technology is concerned."
As VR and its complimenting scanning technologies become cheaper, applications will grow. At Cyest, the team demonstrates a rudimentary shopping system where I virtually walk among the shelves and choose my goods. Might we one day quickly 'pop' to the shops by slipping on a pair of VR goggles, maybe during our mid-morning coffee-and-gossip break?
Thanks to innovations such as Google Cardboard, my mobile phone may be the most sophisticated VR kit I'd need. And thanks to heavy industry's growing interest in VR, creating those virtual worlds is becoming cheaper and more accessible to all.
This article was first published in Brainstorm magazine. Click here to read the complete article at the Brainstorm website.
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