CSIRO - Mapping the Northparkes Mine
In April 2011, CSIRO researchers mapped over 17km of the Northparkes copper/gold mine in New South Wales, Australia. The mine operators required a locally accurate 3D surface model in order to determine whether and how large equipment could be moved through the decline. Vehicle localization underground was achieved using a spinning SICK LMS291. Specialized SLAM software developed at CSIRO allows the vehicle position to be tracked in real-time while simultaneously generating 3D point cloud maps. Two vertical lasers were also mounted to acquire data at uniform density for surface reconstruction. The data was collected in under two hours while driving a site vehicle at regular driving speeds (20-30kph), without disruption to mine operations. The final surface model can be generated within a few hours of acquisition. The resulting surface model is globally consistent and was georeferenced using available 2D mine plan data. The hardware used was previously constructed for other experiments, and due to the short turnaround time for this deployment, it was left mostly unchanged for this application. The plastic sheeting over the sensor payload was required to protect the equipment from dust suppression mist present in some areas of the mine. An earlier video demonstrating the spinning laser SLAM algorithm can be seen here: youtu.be More information on our mapping and localization research can be found here: research.ict.csiro.au