This surface collision avoidance safety system enhances productivity and operational continuity.

Becker Mining South Africa’s latest generation safety device – the Intelligent Collision Avoidance System (ICAS) – provides situational awareness for operators to ensure optimum safety on site.

This surface collision avoidance system also enhances productivity and operational continuity, while reducing operating costs through the elimination or reduction of damage to assets.

“ICAS is a critical safety system, which encompasses the latest industrial technology, to provide reliable real time, 360° situation awareness for vehicle operators working in potentially dangerous and congested site applications, from coal pits to the ports,” says Andrew Trentelman, senior general manager: electronics, Becker Mining South Africa.

“Blind spots, poor visibility and driver distraction are common causes for unwanted vehicle interactions on mine sites, processing plants, rail and road networks and ports. By creating awareness and eliminating blind spots, these hazards are reduced, which means fewer collisions and a lower risk of injury. Operators have improved reaction time to make decisions that will avoid near misses and collisions.”

“This IP 67 marine grade device, which consists of three components – the display unit, GPS antenna and radio antenna – ensures equipped vehicles and fixed infrastructure are always visible and identifiable to operators, even in harsh, dusty environments.”

Applications for ICAS include heavy vehicle (HV) to heavy vehicle, heavy vehicle to light vehicle (LV), medium vehicle (MV) to LV and HV, vehicle to personnel, fixed and mobile plant, advanced train and rail track worker warning and rail level crossing activation.

The system enhances operator awareness by providing accurate data, including vehicle orientation, using a combined industrial grade Global Positioning System (GPS) and compass heading sensor for maximum awareness at start up.

The flexibility of the system enables configurable guard zones to suit each vehicle and specific site regulations and also facilitates accurate ranging with speed adaptive zoning.

The 50 channel GPS receiver provides a high level of GPS coverage and reliable 3D positioning, minimising the need for surface-based repeaters. If there is existing infrastructure, it can be incorporated into the ICAS system to increase system range.

ICAS equipped vehicles and machines within the configured guard and alert zones (up to 2 km) are represented via an intuitive graphical HMI display. Once detected, the system uses a secure radio wireless network to activate surrounding ICAS systems. The presence of vehicles and obstacles, within critical guard zones, is automatically advised to operators via visual and audible alerts.

ICAS can filter out non-priority targets and only displays the vehicles and infrastructure that may be on a collision course, thus removing the risk, uncertainty and stress related to working and interacting with vehicles in highly dangerous, congested, low visibility and isolated environments.

Equipment Africa says: Of interest is that Becker Mining South Africa’s collision avoidance safety systems have all been designed to facilitate future upgrades. These modular systems, which range from a simple, low-cost single technology device, to an integrated multi-technological system, encompass all aspects of the most advanced communications and technology.