GETs are usually a lost excavator bucket tooth, lost drill rods or drill bits in 12-24m deep blast holes, or a missing dozer ripper tooth. 95% of incidents are caused by lost drill rods/bits in a 12-24m deep blast hole.

Technically, the “GET detection drone” is a DJI M300 RTK equipped with SPH Engineering’s SkyHub onboard computer with True Terrain Following system and SENSYS MagDrone R3 magnetometer, all under the control of UgCS ground control software.

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The drone’s job is to locate the lost GET before it enters the ore crushers or the mill, causing multimillion-dollar damage.

The general workflow of operations: the lost GET area gets isolated, moved to designated GET stockpiles, scanned by the drone, magnetic anomalies are accurately located in post-processing software, next cleaned with a selected cleaning machine equipped with HP-GPS guidance system, and finally removed to trash bins.

The cleaned stockpiles can get fed through the crushers and mill, recovering the ore without damaging any infrastructure.

Magnetometer on the drone collects high-resolution geotagged data of the magnetic field in the survey area. After processing, a map of magnetic anomalies is generated to locate spots that are lost GET with high probability.