Monitoring operational mining equipment using Sprouts Wireless Sensor Network platform

Abstract

This paper discusses the application use of our WSN platform called Sprouts to monitor the current erosion conditions and retrieval of lost shovel-teeth in the Oil Sands mining operations of Ft. McMurray, Alberta, Canada. The modular architecture design of Sprouts allows us to customize the platform to monitor the thickness of shovel teeth and localize their position upon detachment. Utilizing our Sprouts plug-andplay protocol, we implement three sensor modules to monitor the thickness of the shovel tooth in operation using ultrasound waves, detect the event of a fallen shovel-tooth, and aid the retrieval of fallen shovel teeth using trilateration localization before they cause damage to crushers.

Wireless Sensing for Ground Engaging Tools

“…Later, it was framed as general-purpose HP for IoT . Sprouts was proposed to be used for monitoring GET [51]. Sprouts has hardware features needed for industrial monitoring applications.…”

“…In [51] and [49] [67], the use of Sprouts was proposed for monitoring GET. However, the actual implementation had not been developed.…”

“…While such works presented a good feasibility analysis, some aspects of the proposed implementation were impractical. For example, in [51], the SN required a hole drilled in the shovel tooth to install the antenna. The hole depth and diameter are hard to achieve with current machining or casting technologies.…”