By the it, Hogsback is referring to a handy little device that can do terrestrially what it normally takes a constellation of satellites and an atomic clock to do.
Not that the Canberran would have even heard the Swan Gold jingle or tasted the long-gone brew. Beer politics being what they were up to the 1990s, people from the east did not drink Western Australian beer and vice versa. That XXXX Gold has become the nation’s most popular brew still staggers this humble Hog.
Leaving beer aside – just for the moment – the Locatalite system produced by Gambale’s company Locata can best be described as a land-based global positioning system.
It has the potential to increase the productivity of a number of open cut coal operations simply by given miners an accurate picture of where their equipment is on the mine.
GPS already provides that of course. But when a piece of mining equipment gets close to the pit wall it can often lose lock on some of the satellites it needs to accurately position itself.
With the Locata system the Locatalite units are put around the mine on masts so that the mining equipment can always “see” at least three of them. This way the piece of mining equipment gets positioning data as accurately as it would from GPS.
Yes, what cost the US Air Force about $40 billion to do with a network of satellites can be replicated with a series of units about the size of a VHS cassette (for those not old enough to know what a video cassette is, Google it).
All of this for a fraction of a cost of just one of the GPS satellites.
Even better, the Locata system can be linked into GPS so it takes over whenever the GPS signal drops out.
Probably the biggest compliment granted to Gambale’s technology has come from the US Air Force itself.
It has taken on the system for use in one of its major bombing ranges in place of its own GPS.
In the mining game Locata has partnered with Leica Geosystems Mining for use in its Leica Jigsaw Positioning System. This Jps, as it is called, is the backbone of a range of Leica mining automation tools.
As Longwalls readers will know, Locata and Leica yesterday announced the extension of their partnership.
So what is the big deal about precise positioning in the mining game?
Think about how effective drilling operations become if the rig can position itself exactly where the mine planning software says it should be drilling.
Think about how handy it would be for the excavator operator to know what is waste and what is ore.
For one thing, it removes the need for surveyors to get down into the dangerous parts of the pit to mark these things out.
