Projects

Case Studies & Technical Papers

Mining

How Gruyere Mine Handled Growing Survey Demand and Eased Surveyor Pressure with Autonomous Drones

Gruyere, a large open-pit gold mine in Western Australia, faced a common, frustrating survey problem. Their busy survey team worked hard to keep up with growing demand for drone surveys across the site. More departments were requesting drone surveys, aerial imagery, and 3D data more frequently, often at short notice.

South African Iron Ore mine automates routine production block surveys while maintaining survey-grade accuracy

Mining - Iron Ore

Mining & Construction

South African Iron Ore mine automates routine production block surveys while maintaining survey-grade accuracy

At one of South Africa’s largest iron ore operations routine survey blocks were only conducted by requiring surveyors to spend excessive time travelling between the office and mining areas.

How Gruyere Mine Handled Growing Survey Demand and Eased Surveyor Pressure with Autonomous Drones

Australia

April 14, 2026

Why WSP Added Autonomous Drone Monitoring to a Critical Tailings Dam Expansion

Mining

Mining & Construction

Why WSP Added Autonomous Drone Monitoring to a Critical Tailings Dam Expansion

Appointed to manage a tailings storage facility (TSF) embankment raise at a large copper mine, WSP needed a fast way to monitor construction progress. Construction was about to begin and with tight deadlines in place they needed independent construction surveys from day one.

WA Gold Mine Gets Faster Post-Blast Surveys & Better Grade Control With Remote Drones

At their Binduli operation in WA, Norton Gold Fields operates multiple open pits that feed a single central processing plant. With the plant running at capacity, any waste rock that makes it into the mill reduces overall gold recovery. That’s why their Head of Geology wanted faster, more reliable blast-survey data. Accurate dig boundaries meant the difference between sending high-grade ore to the plant or the waste dump.

How Automated Drone Surveys Eliminated Survey Downtime at This WA Gold Mine

At King of the Hills gold mine in WA, their small survey team was stretched thin handling more requests than they could keep up with. Limited resources and FIFO schedules meant they often had days without enough qualified people on site to operate drones.

Australia

August 6, 2025

From Manual Flights to Remote Ops: Automating Drone Surveys at Rio Tinto's Gudai-Darri Site

Mining - Iron Ore

Mining & Construction

From Manual Flights to Remote Ops: Automating Drone Surveys at Rio Tinto's Gudai-Darri Site

Rio Tinto began a trail of its first RocketDNA xBot® at its flagship Gudai-Darri iron ore mine in late 2024; a mine renowned as its most technologically advanced operation.

Australia

March 31, 2025

Mining

Mining & Construction

Drone LiDAR Deployment in Zambia

Rocketmine was deployed to provide LiDAR and Photogrammetry survey data over 7,000 hectares across four project areas in a remote and rural location in Zambia - a country in Southern Central Africa. The Rocketmien team created a DTM (digital terrain model) to understand the position and extents of surface features, together with RGB (photogrammetry) values to create aerial imagery.

Mining & Construction

Preventing Tailings Dam Disasters With Aerial Drone Lidar & Simulation

In 2020, Rocketmine was approached by our client, whose portfolio includes an open-pit gold mine in Ghana. The client required speculative analysis of their tailings dam for safety reasons.

AeroMap

Ghana

October 1, 2020