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Bigmate

Mining Solutions • Proximity Detection (PAS)

Sees the person. Stops the machine.

A proximity awareness system for heavy mining equipment. It picks a person up at 50 metres and, from fifteen, takes the slew down in proportion as they close, so the stop, when it comes, is a controlled one and not an emergency.

Nothing to wear, nothing to carry, and only the last five metres are a stop.

Book a demo See it stop a machine

Person detected on right hand side at 50.0 m

Tracked, no intervention

Plan view. Thresholds and the action each one triggers are set per machine at commissioning.

Trusted across mining,
manufacturing and food production

BMA Kestrel Coal Visy InfraBuild Tyson Foods Glencore
A worker on foot beside a dragline, between the tracks and the trailing cables

On foot, inside the swing path

Until 2022, nothing on the market was integrated to the drives on a dragline.

What the machine does about it

Fitted to the machine, not to the people around it.

  1. 01

    Sees

    LiDAR holds its range through dust, rain and darkness, and returns the ground as well as whatever stands on it.

  2. 02

    Classifies

    Optical says what that return is: a person, a light vehicle, a dozer or a trailing cable.

  3. 03

    Acts on the drive

    Only once more than one unit agrees, and only through the machine’s own drive controls.

A merged 360 degree LiDAR point cloud of the pit around a working dragline
01One merged LiDAR sweep of the pit
A fixed camera view of mining plant working a bench
02The optical view from a fixed camera

03Before anything reaches the drive

  • Each alert carries a validated state
  • Every contributing unit is named by serial
  • A return only one sensor can find never reaches it
  • Classes are set per site, not fixed in the product

03Acts on the drive

The response is proportional, and the rules are yours.

Thresholds and the action each one triggers are set per machine. This site runs wider bands than the standard, slew reduction from 25 metres and a controlled stop inside 10, which is why a vehicle at 22 metres is already being slowed.

Illustration: seen from high on a dragline, a light vehicle with a flag whip on the bench about twenty metres out, driving towards the machine

22.20m

Vehicle · slew reduction band

The machine slows itself

Agreed by three LiDAR units named on the alert. The slew comes down in proportion and the machine keeps working.

Slew reduced by 39.01%
Illustration: the same view, with the light vehicle now about ten metres from the dragline's tub

11.43m

Vehicle · deeper in the slew reduction band

Closer, and it slows harder

Still outside the ten metre stop band, so nothing stops. The reduction is proportional, so the closer the vehicle comes, the more of the slew it takes away.

Slew reduced
Illustration: the same view, with a worker on foot in high visibility clothing walking beside the dragline's tub, a few metres from the machine

5.49m

Person · inside the stop band

Inside ten metres, it stops

No wearable, no tag, no beacon. Seen, classified, and the machine brought down through its own drive controls.

Controlled stop

The operator sees exactly what the system sees.

No separate console and no interpretation layer. The detections that reach the drive are the ones on the screen, beside the health of every unit feeding them.

The full PAS operator display: five live camera views, two alert panels, the plan view, the class monitor and the device health column
  • 1

    Five optical views, live

    Fixed cameras around the machine, so the operator can look at the ground the system is talking about.

  • 2

    The alert, in full

    Object, distance, assessed risk, validation and the action taken, with every contributing unit named by serial.

  • 3

    Plan view on real ground

    The zones drawn where they actually fall, with each tracked object placed on them.

  • 4

    It reports on itself

    Every optical and LiDAR unit currently online, so a unit that drops out is visible rather than silently absent.

Book a demo

Don’t just detect the risk. Intervene.

Book a demo with our engineers and see real-time perception running on your operations.

Book a demo

Proven in production

99.99986%

Detection accuracy in live operation

Across 2,689,870 minutes of analytics, and counting.

World firstThe first proximity awareness system fitted to a dragline
In productionFour years on live draglines, and counting
RecognisedQueensland Mining Awards 2024, Safety Innovation
In serviceRunning the pit since 2022, now on machines in the USA

Read the Curragh case study →