Often it is necessary in mining to profile a tunnel or shaft to evaluate its size and structural integrity. This can be achieved with Acuity's AR4000 laser sensor and line scanner unit, available from Bestech in Australia and New Zealand.
This system integrates a precise mirror assembly with a laser rangefinder, to provide a laser scanner that sweeps a laser spot through a 360° rotation. By mounting the laser scanner onto a moving assembly, such as a robotic vehicle (or in mine shafts more likely a pod), it becomes a 3D tunnel profiling system.
The AR4000 laser sensor is extremely accurate, even at long distances, and a high-speed interface card is used to achieve the required 3D profile. The HSIF card increases the sampling rate to up to 200kHz, and reads the encoder on the back of the spinning mirror. The result is an accurate collection of point cloud data in polar coordinate form.
The tunnel and mine shaft profiling system is PC-programmable and data is captured and manipulated so that only relevant measurements are shown. This allows the user of the profile scanner to evaluate what they need as fast and simply as possible.
This tunnel/shaft profiling system is available in Australia and New Zealand from Bestech Australia.
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