sensemetrics signs IIoT partnership with YieldPoint
17/06/2020
California-based Industrial Internet of Things (IIoT) and cloud technology company sensemetrics has entered the underground mining market via a co-development and go-to-market partnership with Canadian instrumentation company YieldPoint.The two companies will initially target mineral and metal mines in the Americas and Australasia.
Under the agreement, YieldPoint’s d-Tech line of digital sensors has been integrated with the sensemetrics cloud platform. This solution can enable underground mine operators to rapidly respond to changing conditions, accurately predict and prevent risk, improve safety conditions, save thousands of hours of high-value engineering time and reduce overall operational costs.
The partnership is designed to address the complexities inherent in the underground mining environment. Easily accessible resources, such as those close to the surface that are easy to extract, are becoming increasingly scarce. Conventional open-pit mining methods are not cost-effective when mining deep orebodies and the deeper the mines, the higher the risks associated with the operation.
Geotechnical instrumentation has become a fundamental component of underground mine engineering, allowing mine operators to monitor a variety of metrics, such as strain, pressure, load, stress, vibration and other parameters, all of which are critical to the optimal and safe operation of the mine and its workers.
The amount of geotechnical instrumentation needed in an underground mine can range based on the geometry and complexity of the mine, as well as seismicity and varying geological conditions. In more challenging operating environments, the risks are much greater and the demand for geotechnical instrumentation is increased but can be challenging to manage from a cost and maintenance perspective. This is where the approach that sensemetrics and YieldPoint have jointly developed can be of the greatest benefit.
Many of sensemetrics’ existing customers either already have underground operations or are planning to develop them in the near future. At the same time, it has been acknowledged that the underground mining environment differs from the traditional distributed condition monitoring applications in open-pit mines where adoption of sensemetrics has already been very successful.
The new agreement calls for the two companies to co-develop products for an initial period of three years. After that, the agreement will automatically renew.
