Determination of the size of rock granules in a bucket and on a conveyor

Computer vision

01/

Сhallenge

The size of the rock pellets is an indicator of the efficiency of the entire mining process.

Very small pellets indicate that extra explosives are spent on drilling and blasting - it's expensive.

Too large granules reduce the performance of the bucket, because voids form in it. And they also require more processing time and can even break the crushing machine.

Solution

Counting granules of different sizes using computer vision algorithms.

Task

It is necessary to determine the number and size of granules in the bucket and on the belt and find granules of too large size.

02/

Why is it useful

Employees do not have to evaluate the composition of the conveyor belt by eye – and this is additional time and qualifications:

automation of the verification process

acceleration and optimization of bucket/belt operation

The data about this is transmitted to the customer

The system analyzes the video and highlights granules of too large size

Cameras are installed on the conveyor and bucket (if they are not already there)

03/

How it works

Problem

If the video quality was sufficient indoors, then it was more difficult to work "in the fields". The bucket is quite dark during the day, and often the work goes on at night.

Solution

Additional lighting and additional training of the model were needed to work in difficult visual conditions.

The bucket is dark

Problem

There could be from 600 to 1000 objects in one picture, and they all look pretty similar. Besides, the conveyor belt is moving fast.

Solution

Therefore, markup played an important role in the project — and we had to work with it.

Large mass of similar objects

04/

The problems we are facing