Spin-offs from space programmes are used in a new system for remote monitoring of heavy-duty machinery operating at excavation and mining sites worldwide. Using ESA’s Business Incubator, four companies working together with help from ESA experts, were able to pool ideas to produce a system with a faster response time, increasing both safety and productivity.
Mining is often done at remote sites, which are difficult to monitor from a company’s central control base. At the same time any problems or failures with the large and expensive trucks and excavators need to be resolved fast to minimise downtime. This calls for good and reliable communication facilities.
Dutch start-up company EstrellaSat, nurtured at ESA’s Business Incubator in Noordwijk, the Netherlands, has come up with a turnkey system based on space-derived technologies that enable a central control base to monitor machines and the people operating them at the company’s excavation sites in real time.
"Our goal is to increase the productive availability of ultra-heavy mining trucks, giant excavators and earthmovers that extract and transport mineral ore from open-cut mines to processing facilities in some of the most remote regions of the planet", says Jean Verhardt, inventor of the system and manager of EstrellaSat BV.
Verhardt has created a special mobile data platform based on technology originally developed to overcome errors and loss in communication with distant spacecraft.
In addition to the satellite modem, Verhardt improved his system by incorporating space technology transfers from other start-up companies located at Esa’s Business Incubator at Estec. The company Eatops specialises in providing advanced tools and systems to monitor remote gas and oil offshore. It contributed to EstrellaSat’s service with its Rivops product, an advanced graphical user interface system that provides an intelligent and easy overview of a large number of monitored parameters.
Finally, the company ‘bliin’ that develops a mobile and online social network for users to share information, added with their technology handheld location devices to the EstrellaSat system. Esa expertise supports spin-offs at Estec’s Business Incubator.