Northern Ontario gets new drone flight school for mining industry

Safesight Exploration, a company that specializes in drone exploration methods, has opened a new "flight school" to build interest in the emerging use of the technology. 

"SafeSight Exploration Inc. is now a registered flight school capable of general and advanced drone pilot certification," said Talia Tignanelli, Operations Manager. 

"We now are providing Northern Ontario formal onsite training, Transport Canada exam support and flight review," added Tignanelli.

"This was a natural progression for our pilot team. With increased requests to expand from underground mining operations to above ground stock piles we evolved our underground drone to dynamically adapt to above ground flight. Our team of pilots developed not only above ground skill, but curriculum and the ability to certify drone pilots in both above ground flight and in GPS denied environments."

In late 2019, the company celebrated the one year anniversary of the launch of an underground drone flight program at Newmont Goldcorp’s Porcupine mine. At that time, SafeSight Exploration achieved over 100 underground drone flights without incident at the Hoyle Pond Mine.

SafeSight and Newmont Goldcorp have successfully activated and supported an operational underground drone program for more than two years.

The program embedded in Hoyle Pond’s survey team has taken LiDAR survey to the next level. Hoyle Pond’s Chief Surveyor, David Poulin, had this to say, “Over the past year our drone program has allowed our survey team to safely increase the speed, accuracy and capacity of our scans while the operator is at a safe distance out of harm's way”.

Collaboration between the team at Hoyle Pond and SafeSight has facilitated the formalization of operational procedures and the supporting technology in Underground Flight. Jamieson McCausland, SafeSight’s lead Robotics engineer noted, “Weekly and at times daily flights helped us understand key functional requirements to ensure scans could be delivered in under an hour post flight, so that we didn’t slow down other elements of the value chain.”

For more information you can visit the company's website at www.safesightxp.com or contact them at training@safesightxp.com.  

 

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