First underground drone flight

Good day ATS,
As some of you know, I know a thing or two about drones.
I have been asked to conduct presentations, do interviews, submit technical papers, all sorts of geek things.
All because, I was the first person to utilize a drone for underground mine operations.

As you all know, mining is inherently dangerous. We have lost a few people over the years at my mine site.

Being an RC hobbyist, I had an idea to help improve the safety of some of the more dangerous applications underground.

By eliminating any potential risk to the employee, and placing all that risk on a piece of plastic, i thought I could save lives...and I have

Due to the unique design of my system, it can be utilized into an confined space environment.

Now that the design is patented, I can share this with you, by showing you the very first flight of a drone descending a drop raise, into an open stope, then flying back out the way it came.

Remember, underground you dont have the luxury or GPS enabled position control.

My drone is equipped with a 1080 hi def cam, as well as a thermal.

I hope you enjoy!

a reply to: Macenroe82

Excellent! Good on you! Having the desire to protect the safety of your fellow employees is an A+ in my book. I am extremely safety focused, personally, having been almost killed twice now at work.
BRAVO!

a reply to: Macenroe82

Possible design one that can mimic the movement of a worm through the Earth or even a snake and i imagine it could get into rather a few places we simply cannot travel underground.

a reply to: Macenroe82

They're starting to pop up everywhere now that people have realized how useful they can be. The Air Force recently did a preflight inspection on a C-17 using one. They were able to get to all the areas you normal just have to look for major problems and hope.

Very cool that you did this. Hopefully it'll save a bunch of lives in the mines in the future.

Cool! that is so awesome! I would have never imagined it to be in that mesh(?). Is that to prevent it from falling and breaking into parts?

Oh.. this makes sense, I saw the heading and then what? no Blériot eye candy?

a reply to: pfishy

Thanks you very much!

Safety has been my #1 motivation behind this idea.
Because of this, today I was asked if I would be willing to be the feature highlight in the Canadian Institute of Mining Magazine.
As well, if I would do a TED Talk in Toronto.

Its very exciting seeing this idea being adopted in to mining safety.
It was my goal in the first place, but to actually have it happening... it feels like an honor to be actually recognized for this stuff.

a reply to: Macenroe82

Very proud to count you as an ats member. S&f

a reply to: Macenroe82

You have done something wonderful. And the concept is so very apt for the industry (or at least, what I understand of mining).

a reply to: Macenroe82



Well done. Congrats on possibly saving 1,000s of lives of Canarys everywhere. Have You thought about franchising for emergency services? Flying in medical supplies and the like???

a reply to: Macenroe82

I was gonna do a drive-by S+F post but that is even more cool!

A TED Talk! Awesome!!

a reply to: Arnie123

The shell, is made from carbon fibre. And is actually gyroscopic. The ball allows it to roll along, just about any surface.
That's what makes it a confined space drone....and essentially crash proof ( unless it runs out of battery mid flight lol)
But There is no worry about it loosing control or crashing, if it makes contact with a surface.

a reply to: JimNasium

Well that's actually a challenge I need to overcome. Currently I'm playing with a balance of mear ounces. Meaning, I can't have much more of a payload, or it will start to cut into flight time. I have 15 minutes of airtime. The craft itself is 897 grams with battery.
What I want to use the ounce of play room for, is adding a fixed gas monitor sensor.
Then I can check air quality underground as well.

a reply to: TEOTWAWKIAIFF

Thank you very much!

a reply to: Macenroe82

This thread should be good training!

People asking random questions, others specific ones, others general... like an AMA!

Then when you do get to your talk, "Hey, look! No trolls!" lol

It's been at least 10 years since I saw someone use tech for something besides monetary gain. Good on you for putting in the work to save lives. It's not everyday people put ego aside.

Amazing, man.



P.s. anyway you could get it to place remote gas monitoring equipment? That way it's a temporary payload, instead of continuous drain on your battery and flight characteristics?

a reply to: TEOTWAWKIAIFF

Hahaha very true!

So far I have done quite a few presentations on this topic.
In fact today I was contacted by the Canadian Institute of Mining - Last year I did a presentation on my developments with underground drone use, at one of their conferences.

Well today I got an email from them saying that my presentation is still being talked about and that it has generated such an interest, that they want to feature me in their magazine.

So they asked if I would be willing to share some technical data, go over some of the challenges I've encountered and what not and talk about where I want to go from here with it.

So I'm pretty excited about that!

a reply to: Macenroe82

You ever thought about just flying that around and freaking some people out? lol

a reply to: Natas0114

Absolutely, and that has been an idea. I was put in contact with someone who has the same vision as I do about mine safety. Martin75 from ATS put me in contact with her father, who happens to also have an interest in mine safety. He flew from Pennsylvania, up to Sudbury Canada when I was doing a presentation last October. We got to talking and he showed me some pretty amazing tech that he has been working on, with the backing of Penn. state.
Turns out he made an Adaptive Artificial Intelligence that operates on the IoT.
Well him and I are starting to work together on integrating Adaptive AI with my drone.

Long and short of it, my drone will be docked underground and hooked up to Lifi - If your unsure of what LiFi is, its similar to Wifi, but hundreds of times faster, and can transmit and receive huge amounts of data over light. The AAI is on the IoT, connected to our underground seismic system, ventilation on demand, IR mapping..etc...
Say there's a large seismic event in one area, the seismic system tells the AAI where the event took place. my drone will be connected to the AAI so it also nowknows there's an event and it's location. It will self deploy, travel to the area the area in question and show in real time the condition of the area. Not only that, but detect if there's high CO, meth...
basically doing the dirty work, and not putting a persons life at risk.

There's so much more to it, so this is just a quick crude example. But it's pretty amazing stuff.

And hell, even if it only saves one life, allows one person to be able to safely go home to their family at the end of their shift, I've done my job and exactly what I set out to do.

a reply to: Macenroe82