Light detection and ranging (LiDAR), popularly known as laser scanning has revolutionised the way of mapping and monitoring underground and open cut mine operations. Laser scanners offer the flexibility of being mounted on a mobile platform, such as drones, ground vehicles or wearable backpacks, or can be used in a static manner to produce a digital twin of the scanned environment in the form of a 3D point cloud. The obtained digital data usually has ample spatial resolution required for various mining applications; and offers the flexibility of remote data processing thereby reducing safety risks associated with the site. With recent developments in simultaneous localisation and mapping (SLAM) based mobile laser scanning, large underground mine network became possible to mapped holistically in a time-efficient manner with sufficient accuracy (Raval et al, 2019).
This study illustrates three important application cases of LiDAR scan in mines which include:
1. automated georeferencing and coregistration of point clouds in GNSS denied underground mines
2. automated object detection
3. automated structural discontinuity mapping.