Boulanger, Pierre 
  
VIRTUALIZED REALITY: AN APPLICATION TO OPEN-PIT MINE MONITORING 
Pierre BOULANGER, Jean-Francois LAPOINTE, and Winston WONG 
National Research Council of Canada 
Institute for Information Technology 
[Pierre.Boulanger][J ean-Francois.Lapointe][ Winston. Wong]@nrc.ca 
Working Group V/3 
KEY WORDS: Virtual reality, real-time control, geographic information system, photogrammetry 
ABSTRACT 
In this paper, an infrastructure for monitoring remote equipment and solving some of the logistic challenges of 
operating satellite surface mines is presented. This infrastructure includes strategies for communicating timely and 
accurate information amongst operators, planners and supervisors, using off-the-shelf network protocols. Advanced data 
visualization techniques are implemented, so users can find information easily in a familiar format. A computerized 
excavator test-bed was developed to demonstrate performance and diagnostic monitoring systems, as well as other 
operator assisted systems. Results to date, including data from the Syncrude's mine site, are presented. 
1 INTRODUCTION 
One of the goals of this project was to demonstrate that safe, effective and reliable monitoring and control of mine 
operations can be performed over satellite and terrestrial communication links, including the Internet 
[Gillett,1999][Lipsett, 1998]. Using this system, supervisors and planners can easily access information from 
equipment, such as production data and condition monitoring information anywhere around the world. With such a 
System, a specialist can remotely access data to solve a problem without having to be transported near the mining site, 
thus saving time and money. 
The system uses the NRC Virtualized Reality toolkit developed especially for this type of application. The toolkit is an 
add-on to the SGI Performer library allowing for the direct connection between sensor data located on the Internet and a 
graphic action in the VR world. Based on this library, a generic viewer was developed allowing visualization of the 
Using this virtualized reality system, every piece of information is displayed in context allowing for a better temporal 
and spatial correlation of events. Syncrude, a Canadian mining company located in northern Alberta, is planning to use 
this technology, not only to understand oil sands mining processes better, but also to give decision-makers better access 
to the timely, accurate information from the field that they need to make informed decisions. 
In the following sections, we will discuss the different aspects of this system from the 
point of view of model building, 
network data communication, sensor systems, system integration, and human factors. 
2 ARCHITECTURE OF THE SYSTEM 
The system is composed of five main sub-systems (Figure 1 shows a bl 
* amodeling station, 
an observer station, 
an operator station, 
a data communication controller, 
an on board remote monitoring sensing system. 
Ock diagram of the system): 
Each sub-system is connected via available terrestrial or satellite links possessing various levels of quality and speed 
over potentially great distances. To achieve this over any distributed system node, whether it is remote equipment, an 
operator station, or an observer station; the system must be capable of receiving data communications from any other 
system node in as timely manner as possible. Additionally, given the bandwidth and latency limitations of data 
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
92 International Archives of Photogrammetry and Remote Sensing. Vol. XXXIII, Part B5. Amsterdam 2000. 
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