Sixth spreader upgraded with laser scanner- and GPS-technology in Hambach surface mine

摘要

In August 2008, the last of six spreaders in the large Hambach opencast mine operated by RWE-Power near Cologne, Germany, was upgraded with scanner- and GPS-technology. This marked an important step in the SATAS (German for: satellite assisted spreader operation) project. During the last two years, hardware was selected and installed on the machines and software was developed to interpret the laser scanner and GPS data and make this information available to the machine operators and to shift leaders, mine planners and managers in the mine offices. With these tools, the stacking process of the spreaders on the inner dump of Hambach surface mine is monitored continuously. This data is used to provide an automatic update of mining progress online. With the resulting three-dimesional (3D) information, optimized planning, stacking and successful monitoring of 1 M m^sup 3^/day (35 million cu ft/d) of overburden has been made possible. [PUBLICATION ABSTRACT]