The Drone Revolution

Draganfly, founded in Saskatoon in 1998, is the longest-running commercial drone manufacturer in the world, offering drone solutions to the mining industry covering predictive analytics, security monitoring, tailing pond sampling and core transportation. Draganfly has witnessed and contributed to the dramatic advancements in drone technology over the past two decades, which have led to their unprecedented popularity and affordability today. However, as industrial and recreational users rush to reap the technological benefits of drone technology, hurdles remain: “Regulatory frameworks often struggle to keep pace with rapid technological advancements. Currently, both manned and unmanned flights are often overseen by the same regulators in North America. This regulatory lag poses challenges to effective scaling,” said Paul Mullen, COO, Draganfly.

This, however, may change in the coming years as Canadian regulators catch up to the booming drone industry: “Regulatory bodies, such as Transport Canada and the FAA, are actively developing protocols to permit beyond-line-of-sight drone operations for airborne geophysical surveys. This regulatory progress indicates that, in the next two to three years, drones will likely become even more prominent in the industry,” said Howard Barrie, president, Terraquest.

Drone technology has advanced to the point where the hardware itself is no longer the limiting factor in the performance of some drone operations. Companies like Exyn Technologies are focused on developing software to enable drones to complete tasks underground autonomously.

Currently, Exyn’s software has achieved Automation level 4 (AL4), meaning its platforms can fully autonomously navigate GPS-denied areas without any input from a human operator during flight, or any infrastructure such as a Wi-Fi network. “Our AL4 does not require a pre-programmed route; the machine can think and navigate for itself,” explained Raffi Jabrayan, VP, business development and commercial sales, Exyn Technologies.

For those companies in the airborne geophysical surveying space, drones can be another useful tool in their arsenal: “We see drones as a valuable instrument for gathering geophysical data. We use the same skills, equipment, and knowledge on our drone surveys as we would on our fixed-wing surveys. They are a tool that allows us to efficiently conduct surveys over a smaller area where a fixed-wing aircraft would not be suitable, said Stephan Sander, co-president, Sander Geophysics.

Expert Geophysics Limited, based in Aurora, Ontario, is working to exploit the advantages drones have over traditional manned aircraft by adapting their existing electromagnetic systems. “We have ongoing efforts to create a drone version of the MobileMT system. This drone platform will revolutionize airborne surveys as it will be the deepest penetrating EM airborne system globally,” said Andrei Bagrianski, president and founder, Expert Geophysics.

In addition to the potential cost savings, drones can have other technical benefits in certain airborne surveys: “The transition from traditional helicopter platforms to drones aims to provide better data quality at depth rather than merely reducing costs. Drones afford us the ability to operate at slower speeds, mitigating motion noise that could compromise data quality,” continued Bagrianski.

Ontario being a center for mining technology, has lept at the opportunity to deploy drones for mining and exploration purposes.

As the technology continues to shrink and become more affordable and performant, we can expect to see the Ontario mining sector’s appetite for drones continue to grow. However, it remains to be seen if the next barrier to adoption will be a technical one, or a regulatory one.