UrBC, Yekaterinburg, March 6, 2018. Two drones are now operating at Raspadskaya Coal Company’s Raspadskaya Mine, EVRAZ Holding Ural’s press service reports.

The equipment is meant to enhance both the speediness and the safety of survey measurements and calculation precision.

‘A drone can take up to 500 photographs of any part of the mine in under thirty minutes. The photos will then be fed into a special software program that will create a 3D model of the relief in just one hour. This used to take up to two days before,’ the press service says.

A quadcopter can do its aerial mapping at the height of up to 500 meters, which is high enough for the survey workers and yet too low to obstruct aircraft. The new drones can operate in almost any weather, even when it’s minus twenty degrees centigrade outside or when the wind speed is as high as 12 meters per second.

Drones can take photographs, make videos, do survey measurements, and take thermal-imaging samples all at the same time. An in-built thermal imaging unit is meant to detect increased temperature spots inside coal mines and thus prevent fires outbreaks.