Jumping onto the drone bandwagon to scale up physical verification of its mining sites and boost productivity, Tata Steel has inked a pact with Aarav Unmanned Systems (AUS), a Bengaluru-based start-up.
With drone-based mining solutions, such as geotechnical mapping and mine analytics, an added plus, the metals and mining major aims at leveraging opportunities arising out of the Atmanirbhar Bharat Abhiyaan and regulatory changes to meet raw material requirements beyond 2030 by creating a sustainable mining business.
The AUS has also been tasked with ensuring higher regulatory fulfillment and safety, with the focus of this collaboration being efficiency, safety and productivity of open cast mining operations.
Economical solutions
On the memorandum of understanding (MoU) signed on July 22, 2022, D. B. Sundara Ramam, Vice-President, Raw Materials, Tata Steel, said: “We are excited to work with AUS again, this time for a longer duration and with a broader vision of sustainable development. Drone survey enabled digitalization and other technology will assist in gathering impactful and actionable insights. We see enormous potential in redefining core mining processes such as exploration and mine planning using drone data and adequate analytics.
“These end-to-end mining solutions are economical, demand fewer on-foot exploration requirements, and improve production, efficiency, and site safety. We also intend to offer our learnings to the rest of the world’s mining companies as a professional solution from our fully owned unit, Tata Steel Industrial Consultancy Limited.”
Remote monitoring
As for AUS, which has been working closely with the steel sector to provide state-of-the-art drone technology to modernize its mining operations, the job at hand will be to lay emphasis on using remote mine monitoring.
Commenting on the partnership, Vipul Singh, Founder and CEO, Aarav Unmanned Systems, said: “Tata Steel is one of the world’s leading steel companies and it has been an honor to provide our sustainable and integrated mining solutions for their operations. The accuracy, reliability and consistency of data is critical in the mining sector, and our solutions will be able to improve Tata Steel’s productivity & efficiency and contribute to modernize their mining operations.
“Tata Steel’s trust in us to create end-to-end solutions jointly with them, for the domestic and global mining industry, directly reflects on the vision we share and openness of a behemoth like Tata Steel to partner with a startup to derive the most effective solution.”
Last year, AUS and Tata Steel had acquired exemptions for drone operations from the Ministry of Civil Aviation for a year across all the 23 mines, plant and raw material locations. The DGCA had approved AUS’ SOP for one year to operate drones at Tata Steel entities to ensure that all operations for Tata Steel are carried out with 100% regulatory compliance.
Survey across 23 locations
Tata Steel Limited is the first private metals and mining major company to use drones. The AUS will deploy drones to survey the mining locations of Tata Steel Ltd. and deliver advanced Mine Analysis every month.
In another contract awarded by the Tata Steel Corporate Audit division, AUS will carry out a drone survey for physical verification of bulk inventory at all the 23 locations across multiple Tata Steel entities for two years.
In the third engagement with the expansions and projects team, AUS’s drone solution is being deployed to monitor the progress of construction in the Tata Steel Kalinganagar steel complex, which will be India’s largest integrated steel complex upon completion. Tata Steel Ltd. has also awarded a contract to procure 3 survey grade drones from AUS for their internal surveys.
