Aggregates Manager Digital Magazine
Issue link: http://read.dmtmag.com/i/452309
TIONS ILLUSTRATED OUR EXPERTS Management: Methods for Taking Measure February 2015 Alex Pearson founded AG UAV, based in Toronto, Ontario, in 2013. He provides consulting services for stock- pile inventory, site plans, and mine plans. Prior to founding AG UAV, Pearson was a project manager for a Whitby, Ontario-based construction company that was also a sand and gravel producer. Pearson holds a degree in mechanical engineering from Queen's University in Kingston, Ontario. Dave Henderson has been di- rector of sales — Geospatial Solutions for Topcon Position- ing Systems for more than four years. Currently based in the Dallas area, he previously was GIS national sales man- ager for Topcon. Henderson has worked in the geospatial solutions business for more than three decades. Traditional manual surveying services, calculating from measurements taken at the base and top of the stockpile, may be costly to contract. And because in- ventory can change from month to month, the asset volume calculations can quickly become inaccurate for accounting purposes. Traditional surveying methods also incur hazards for the surveyor at the top of the stockpile, as well as the one at the base. 3D mobile mapping provides an automated method for taking measurements from the ground, using LIDAR (a term that blends "light" and "radar"), cameras, and GPS, that quickly calculates volume via computer software. The system can be costly, but is a versatile option for vertically integrated companies that extract their own materials and also provide such services as highway construction. Where a manned traditional survey will use thousands of photos, taken every 5 to 20 meters, the sUAV takes millions of still photographic images every 2 to 10 centimeters during the fl ight, each of which overlap. The software stitches the photo mosaics together to generate an overall image of the operation. After the photo mosaics are stitched together, the software then generates an accurate 3D point cloud. With individual stockpiles, for measuring purposes, a polygon can be drawn around the stockpile, and the software computes the volume in cubic feet or meters, which can then be converted to tonnage. With infor- mation stored in the cloud, it can easily be accessed by a regional or company offi ce. Pricey and imprecise 2 3 Versatile technology 5 Taking measure 6 Software paints a picture Lewis Graham is president and CTO of GeoCue Group, Inc., based in Huntsville, Ala. He is a committee member of the Mobile LIDAR Standards for Transportation Agencies division of the Transportation Research Board. Graham has a master's of science in elec- trical engineering (control systems) and a bachelor's degree in physics.