Strayos Conducts 2 Day Lecture and Demonstration for University of Kentucky Surveying Students

Because drone surveying, data analysis, and AI have become integral parts of the mining process, Strayos Solutions Engineer Jon Lewis travelled to the University of Kentucky on October 21 & 22 to speak to their surveying students.

It's been asked by many in the industry, "how do we attract new talent to the mining industry?" Its a big challenge, but luckily there's a solution. Educate young people about the changing nature of what it means to be a miner. Including how technologies like drones, data, and AI are changing the industry and making new opportunities for people who may have never thought of mining in that way before.

Strayos recently teamed up with the University of Kentucky to work with its students regarding how drones are used in the mining, drilling, & blasting industries to collect the data needed for the analytics and AI software.

The 2 day event began with an excellent lecture on Drone Surveying and Photogrammetry. Jon discussed how the software takes relevant surveying parameters from the drone as well as the metadata of each image, like the camera position, latitude, and longitude, etc. The software then finds the same features in each of the images (thanks to sufficient image overlap) to provide depth and begin constructing the 3D model.

After the lecture was the demonstration. Jon, the students, and faculty travelled to the University of Kentucky Explosives Research Team Mine-Site Testing Location where Jon taught the students how to fly a drone and how to use an autonomous flight planning app to gather the images for the software.

Once the site information was collected by the drone, Jon uploaded it to the Strayos platform where it was processed and models were generated for the test site.

Several of the students who had had internships over the summer had some experience flying drones, further proving both, the industry is adopting the new technologies available to it and the next generation of miners are eager to embrace them.

Strayos is dedicated to the future of the drilling, blasting, and mining industries. If you or your students are interested in learning more about how drones, data, or AI are changing the industry and making possible things never before imagined, contact us to discuss how we can help including guest lectures, demonstrations, and educational institution licenses!