Min­ing is one of the most haz­ardous and high-risk indus­tries. How­ev­er, in order to reduce risks and oper­a­tional costs, a promis­ing tech­nol­o­gy has emerged — unmanned aer­i­al vehi­cles (UAVs), com­mon­ly known as drones or quad­copters. Their use helps auto­mate process­es, increase data accu­ra­cy, improve per­son­nel safe­ty, and enhance the eco­nom­ic effi­cien­cy of min­ing enter­pris­es.

Tra­di­tion­al meth­ods of mine sur­vey­ing ser­vices are asso­ci­at­ed with increased risk and require sig­nif­i­cant time, espe­cial­ly in com­plex and hard-to-reach areas. With the use of drones, these process­es become faster and more effi­cient. Drones accel­er­ate min­ing oper­a­tions, reduce costs, help con­trol extrac­tion process­es, and mon­i­tor mate­r­i­al stor­age. The obtained geospa­tial data is char­ac­ter­ized by high qual­i­ty and accu­ra­cy, meet­ing the require­ments of the Rules for Per­form­ing Mine Sur­vey­ing Works dur­ing the Devel­op­ment of Ore and Non-Ore Min­er­al Deposits and enabling the cre­ation and main­te­nance of up-to-date min­ing and graph­i­cal doc­u­men­ta­tion.

One of the key advan­tages of using drones in mine sur­vey­ing is their abil­i­ty to quick­ly and accu­rate­ly col­lect geo­det­ic data of the ter­rain. Equipped with onboard GPS receivers and alti­tude sen­sors, drones can per­form detailed flights over the work area and record pre­cise coor­di­nates and ele­va­tions of each point.

As mine sur­vey­ing equip­ment, drones of var­i­ous types are used depend­ing on their char­ac­ter­is­tics and appli­ca­tion. These typ­i­cal­ly include:

Mul­ti­ro­tor drones — high­ly maneu­ver­able plat­forms capa­ble of col­lect­ing detailed data from dif­fer­ent angles and alti­tudes.
Fixed-wing drones — suit­able for long-range oper­a­tions and extend­ed flight times, wide­ly used for large-scale map­ping and envi­ron­men­tal mon­i­tor­ing.
Heli­copter-type drones — pro­vide increased in-air sta­bil­i­ty and can be equipped with heavy sen­sors and cam­eras.
Hybrid drones — com­bine the advan­tages of mul­ti­ro­tor and fixed-wing sys­tems, offer­ing greater ver­sa­til­i­ty in var­i­ous con­di­tions.

There are many drone mod­els and brands on the mar­ket specif­i­cal­ly designed for mine sur­vey­ing appli­ca­tions. The spe­cif­ic mod­els used may vary depend­ing on the man­u­fac­tur­er, tech­ni­cal spec­i­fi­ca­tions, and oper­a­tional con­di­tions.

Com­mon­ly used in mine sur­vey­ing prac­tice:
DJI Phan­tom — wide­ly used drones equipped with high-qual­i­ty cam­eras and sta­bi­liza­tion sys­tems for accu­rate ter­rain imag­ing.
Sense­Fly eBee — fixed-wing drones devel­oped for map­ping and geo­det­ic sur­veys, offer­ing long flight times and high data accu­ra­cy.
Trim­ble UX5 — fixed-wing drones with high-pre­ci­sion GPS nav­i­ga­tion and autonomous flight capa­bil­i­ties.

Micro­drones mdMap­per — a com­pre­hen­sive solu­tion com­bin­ing a drone with spe­cial­ized data col­lec­tion and pro­cess­ing soft­ware.
Airo­bot­ics Opti­mus — autonomous drones capa­ble of oper­at­ing with­out an on-site oper­a­tor and equipped with ther­mal cam­eras for detect­ing tem­per­a­ture anom­alies.
Wing­traOne — drones capa­ble of high-res­o­lu­tion aer­i­al sur­veys and equipped with glob­al nav­i­ga­tion satel­lite sys­tems.

The choice of a spe­cif­ic drone mod­el depends on project require­ments, bud­get, and reg­u­la­to­ry con­straints. Nev­er­the­less, all such sys­tems pro­vide broad oppor­tu­ni­ties for ana­lyz­ing slope sta­bil­i­ty and ter­rain pro­files to detect defor­ma­tions and land­slides. This helps pre­vent haz­ardous col­laps­es, devel­op effec­tive work plans, opti­mize equip­ment use, and ensure work­er safe­ty.

Drones are also effec­tive for repeat­ed or peri­od­ic sur­veys of min­ing sites. This allows rapid deter­mi­na­tion of extract­ed mate­r­i­al vol­umes, mea­sure­ment of earth embank­ments and exca­va­tion depths after com­plet­ed works, fore­cast­ing of remain­ing mate­r­i­al, and ver­i­fi­ca­tion of sur­face sta­bil­i­ty in rel­e­vant areas.

Thanks to mod­ern soft­ware, data pro­cess­ing takes only a few hours, sig­nif­i­cant­ly reduc­ing the time required for rou­tine report­ing tasks. This is espe­cial­ly use­ful for mon­i­tor­ing the imple­men­ta­tion of the Min­ing Oper­a­tions Devel­op­ment Plan, account­ing of reserves and min­er­al deple­tion. The use of drones reduces labor inten­si­ty and costs, enables fre­quent sur­veys as need­ed, min­i­mizes human-fac­tor influ­ence on data pro­cess­ing, and facil­i­tates a tran­si­tion to paper­less spa­tial data man­age­ment and report­ing.