Engineering the Answer When There's No Off-the-Shelf Fix
When a public road cut through an active mine site, MPI engineered custom boom gates that sense approaching haul trucks and lock the crossing down. The same problem-first approach now connects fatigue detection straight to the PDS so a control room can stop a truck in real time, and bridges surface and underground proximity systems that used to go blind at the handover point. MPI starts with the client's actual problem, then builds the technology around it.
This was an actual challenge a mine came to us with: A public road runs straight through one of our active mine sites.
Members of the public drive past haul trucks the size of houses, sometimes within a few metres.
There's no product on a shelf for that. So we engineered one. Boom gates that sense an approaching haul truck and close to hold public traffic, wired into the traffic lights and cameras so the whole crossing stays controlled and recorded. One of the site's most dangerous points became predictable.
This work matters more than ever. South African mines recorded 42 fatalities in 2024, the lowest ever recorded. And since December 2022, the law requires trackless machines to slow and brake themselves to a safe stop when no action is taken to prevent a collision. Detection on its own no longer clears the bar. (Mining Weekly, International Mining)
That thinking shapes what we're building now. Camera-based fatigue detection has become common across mining. It flags a tired operator, then leaves you with a question: what happens next? We're connecting fatigue detection to our PDS so a serious event reaches a control room and, where needed, brings the truck to a safe stop in real time. The trucks already know how to stop themselves. We're giving that capability a new trigger.
Then there's a gap most people outside mining never see. Surface and underground fleets often run different proximity systems that can't talk to each other. The moment an underground machine surfaces, the surface equipment is blind to it. We found a way to bridge the two, so both stay visible at the exact handover point where a vehicle used to vanish.
People ask what makes us different.
The answer is where we begin.
We look at the client's real problem first, then design the system around it.
Every mine is different. Each site carries its own risks, so the answer always starts with understanding the challenge before we design the technology.
A safe mine is a sustainable mine. Safety first, production always.
That's the MPI way.