CAM-383

A bucket of gray gravel on top of the wrong stockpile

Mid-morning at the stockyard. Each pile has its grade board hung behind it: limestone, silica sand, gravel, iron ore. A yellow wheel loader lifts its bucket over the pile of tan material and drops a load of gray gravel that runs down the slope and leaves a tongue you can’t miss. A worker in a white hard hat sees it from the edge of the yard. IRIS sees material of one appearance landing on a pile of another.

CAM-383 · STOCKYARD · BLEND MISMATCH

What IRIS understands

What it recognizes in this scene

gray gravel falling onto the stockpile
wheel loader tipping
stockpile taking the load
reddish iron ore stockpile
worker on foot in the yard

What this camera measures

An alert says something’s happening. The reading says how much.

11:05Time of the tip
12Tips onto this pile today
7Stockpiles watched in the yard
18 sTime since tipping started
2People on foot in the yard

The figures on this screen are an example from the illustration, not any client’s measurement.

The rule

You decide once. IRIS applies it always.

material of a different appearance is tipped onto a stockpile

Then

alert the yard supervisor with the machine, the pile and the time
save the video from the loader filling up to emptying the bucket
flag that pile for sampling before it goes to the process

The instruction that set it up«Tell me if a loader drops material on a stockpile that is not that pile’s material.»

What changes

What changes for whoever answers for the plant

Mid-morning, and the loader driver has moved forty buckets in a row between stockpiles. Number forty-one lands on the wrong pile. Nobody notices today: it shows up when the kiln gets a mix that wasn’t the one planned and the whole shift has to be readjusted, because blending is what makes a product come out the same every time. With the camera, the supervisor has the alert while the bucket is still in the air: the machine, the pile and the video. Removing a bucket just tipped is easy. Finding it inside a mountain isn’t.

What people usually ask

Does IRIS read the grade written on the stockpile board?

It can read the board, but that isn’t measuring grade. IRIS ties each mountain to the stockpile the mine has assigned to it and checks what’s tipped on top, by color, shape and particle size. What’s actually inside that mountain, in percentage of metal, silica or moisture, is stated by the laboratory from a sample. The camera warns that the blend has changed; the assay says by how much.

Can it tell how much material each stockpile holds?

Not in tons. A camera counts tips and assigns them to each pile: how many bucketloads and how many trucks went to each stockpile today, and at what time. That tally is repeatable and it’s useful for reconciling against the truck scale. The exact volume of a mountain is surveyed with topography or a scanner, not with an image. The camera gives the movement; the survey gives the volume.

Can you look up afterward who tipped on each pile?

You can look up which machine and at what time, not who. IRIS does not identify people and does not tie them to a shift. What’s kept is the scene: the machine, the pile, the minute and the video of the tip. With that, the supervisor can search by stockpile and by time window and see every tip of a day in a few minutes. What’s done with that information afterward is the plant’s business.

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