What is it?

Onix is an unmanned ‘drobotics’ solution (drone and robotics system) that remotely deploys and maintains geotechnical survey prisms in high-risk areas of open pit mines.

Who is using it?

Our primary stakeholders are:

– Mining Companies – namely geotechnical engineers that oversee slope monitoring strategies in open pit mines

– Overseas drone operators who we are partnering with to operate our solution in international markets.

– Contractors offering alternative geotechnical services who wish to add Onix to their list of existing solutions

How is it making an Impact?

In 2019, a Tasmanian mine worker fell to his death when manually installing monitoring prisms. This incident created a company-wide mandate to no longer have personnel exposed to hazardous environments. We then developed Onix so mining companies had an unmanned way to deploy prisms into high-risk areas. Our solution creates safer mine sites in two ways:

1. Onix enhances safety by removing workers from hazardous environments, rapidly deploying prisms into otherwise inaccessible or dangerous areas of the pit.

2. By expanding total prism coverage and capturing monitoring data from previously unreachable locations, Onix significantly improves over-slope monitoring, reducing the likelihood of failure.