Exyn Technologies and Rupert Resources (TSX: RUP) partnered to produce highly detailed 3D models of a historic gold mine in Central Lapland, northern Finland, an area that otherwise is inaccessible to traditional CMS tools or even manually piloted drones
In a press release, the companies explained that the partnership came to be due to Rupert’s need to plan for a potential restart of operations by estimating tonnage previously removed from the mine, as well as calculating the remaining ore in heavily restricted areas.
The areas being mapped at Pahtavaara are inaccessible to traditional CMS tools or even manually piloted drones
To gather the information, Exyn used a single drone whose fully autonomous aerial robots mapped 30 stopes. In parallel, a version of the robots was mounted onto a car to scan all access drifts which, together with the stope maps, provided a complete mine map.
Exyn’s autonomous drones are built on the exynAI platform, which enables aerial robots to fly intelligently without a human pilot using a multitude of high-tech sensors and AI-based software. The system operates without the need for GPS or external communications and is deployed as an all-in-one software and hardware package.
“Rupert is actively seeking new technologies where we think big gains can be made in terms of safety, productivity, and accuracy,” Jukka Nieminen, the miner’s managing director at the Finland division, said in the media brief. “Exyn achieved accurate assessment of the volume of remaining stopes at Pahtavaara with an unprecedented level of detail, and obviously the use of remote technologies means that this was achieved with a greatly reduced degree of risk.”