Case Study: How Confined Space Drones Digitize a Canadian Mine and Keep Crews Out of the Stope

The problem: surveying spaces no one should enter

Consider a typical Canadian underground hard-rock mine running long-hole open stoping. After a blast, the survey team needs accurate volume and geometry data on the open stope: how much ore was actually mucked, whether the walls broke back beyond the planned profile, and whether overbreak or sloughing has created a hazard for the next lift. The same questions apply to ore passes that may be hung up or worn, ventilation raises, and abandoned voids that intersect new development.

Conventional options are all compromised. Sending a surveyor to the brow of an open stope exposes them to fall-of-ground and inrush risk. Cavity Monitoring Systems (CMS) booms reach only so far and produce shadowed data behind irregular geometry. None of these approaches give a mine a safe, repeatable way to build a full 3D record of a space that is, by design, hostile to people. Confined space drones close that gap by flying the data capture instead of walking it.

The illustrative deployment

In this scenario, the survey department standardizes on two complementary platforms from the Measur confined-space lineup, each suited to a different part of the mine.

Large voids and stopes: ScoutDI Scout 137

For open stopes and large voids, the team flies the ScoutDI Scout 137. It is a tethered platform, which is a deliberate advantage underground: power is delivered continuously over the 40-metre tether, giving effectively unlimited flight time and a fully wired, reliable control path that does not depend on a radio link in a GPS-denied, signal-blocked environment. The Scout 137 carries an industry 3D LiDAR sensor as standard and builds a 3D point cloud using SLAM, with automatic anti-collision and pilot support so the aircraft holds position in turbulent, dusty air.

Visibility is the other constraint underground, and the Scout 137 addresses it directly with over 12,000 lumens of onboard lighting plus a 4K (3840 x 2160 at 30 fps) camera on a 2-axis stabilized gimbal with plus or minus 90 degrees of pitch. For mine-specific risks, the optional gas sensor adds flammable-gas detection and warning, while the optional UTM payload supports ultrasonic thickness measurement with a live A-scan where corrosion of steel infrastructure is a concern. Data flows into the Scout App on site and the cloud-based Scout Portal for SLAM processing, 3D visualization and reporting. Our continuous industrial inspection guide for the Scout 137 covers its workflow in more depth.

Tight passes and access drifts: Flybotix ASIO X

For narrow ore passes, raises and restricted access points where a 613 x 382 mm aircraft will not fit, the team switches to the Flybotix ASIO caged inspection drone. Its sturdy protective cage tolerates contact with rock walls, and its dual-rotor design is engineered for stability and longer flight time than comparable caged platforms in tight, turbulent spaces. The ASIO supports LiDAR data capture and 3D point clouds to detect cracks and measure distances, with the ASIO Explore app for on-site visualization and defect or distance measurement, and the ASIO Connect cloud platform for data management. See our guide to navigating complex indoor environments with the Flybotix ASIO X for handling characteristics.

Platform comparison

The data quality and safety case

The clearest benefit is exposure reduction: in this model, no surveyor stands at a stope brow or enters an ore pass to collect geometry. That is the heart of the safety argument, and it aligns with the broader principles in our pillar guide on safe and efficient confined space inspections, which also covers safety compliance for indoor drone operations.

Data quality improves in parallel. Because the drone can fly into the void rather than scanning from a single fixed station, SLAM-based point clouds capture geometry behind ribs and irregular features that a boom-mounted scanner would leave in shadow. That produces more complete overbreak and dilution analysis, better reconciliation between planned and actual stope volumes, and a digital record the geotechnical team can revisit over time. In GPS-denied underground space, the choice between sensing methods matters; our comparison of LiDAR vs. photogrammetry in GPS-denied environments explains why LiDAR-led SLAM is typically the stronger fit for these conditions.

There is also a cost-and-schedule dimension familiar from other heavy industries. Drone access can reduce the staging, access-building and standby time that manual confined-space entry demands, much as it does when it replaces scaffolding in other sectors. For a mine, the analogous savings come from fewer re-entry delays and faster turnaround between blast and survey.

How a mine would scope this

A real evaluation starts with the spaces you most need to digitize and how tight they are, since that drives the platform mix. Map your largest voids to the Scout 137 and your tightest passes to the ASIO, confirm gas-detection and thickness-measurement requirements, and plan how point-cloud data will move into your existing survey and geotechnical software. To size a configuration for your operation, request a quote and our team can help match platforms and payloads to your underground conditions.