Estimation and tracking of excavated material in mining

This paper provides a method for representing, tracking and fusing information on excavated material as it moves through a mining process chain. A constrained augmented state Kalman filter (based on simultaneous localization and mapping principles) is used as the basis for this process. A method for representing the material properties stochastically based on the unique location of the lumped material is also developed. Through the application of this method, correlations between material at different locations can be maintained. This method is validated through real world experiments simulating an open pit mine excavation.