International Journal of Mineral Processing 125 (2013) 61–77

Contents lists available at ScienceDirect

International Journal of Mineral Processing

journal homepage: www.elsevier.com/locate/ijminpro

Dynamic modelling of 3D stockpile for life-cycle management through

sparse range point clouds
Shi Zhao a, Tien-Fu Lu a,⁎, Ben Koch b, Alan Hurdsman b
a
School of Mechanical Engineering, The University of Adelaide, SA 5005 Australia
b
MatrixGroup, Level 5 185 Victoria Square, Adelaide SA 5000, Australia

a r t i c l e i n f o a b s t r a c t

Article history: Geometric stockpile models are always used to estimate the quantity and quality of iron ore in stockpile manage-
Received 22 October 2012 ment systems. However, most of these models are not suitable for quality control purposes in iron-ore export fa-
Received in revised form 5 August 2013 cilities because no measurement device is used to continuously provide updated information for the modelling.
Accepted 28 September 2013
This paper presents a solution to accurately measure profiles along the stockpile surface in real time and automat-
Available online 9 October 2013
ically models the 3D stockpile during stacking and reclaiming operations. Using a 2D laser range finder, the spa-
Keywords:
tial data of a stockpile, such as the positions of different layers, the cutting surfaces during the reclaiming are
Stockpile management represented by mathematical equations. Experiments conducted in a laboratory environment indicated good re-
3D modelling sults and proved that the modelling approach is accurate and efficient. By making available the latest shapes of
Laser stockpiles and quality information, it is possible to predict the tonnage and quality grade with a greater degree
Least square of accuracy. Also, together with the reclaimer position data, it is possible to develop adaptive reclaiming algo-
Bulk material rithms to continually adjust the quality with respect to the quality requirement, which warrants meeting the re-
quired quantity and quality while enhancing the export efficiency and increasing productivity.
© 2013 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.

1. Introduction
Statistical data indicate that 92% of iron ore mined in Australia is
exported to global customers for steel making (Australian Bureau of Ag-
ricultural and Resource Economics and Sciences, 2010). In such interna-
tional trading, the quality of the shipped product is governed by two
factors: the tenor of the iron-ore body and the short-term grading con-
sistency. The latter one is the main criterion and is closely monitored by
customers on a ship-by-ship basis. To control the product quality and
meet customers' specifications, stockpiles are widely used in iron-ore
handling due to their abilities to blend ores and homogenize quality
grades of delivered products.
The blending and homogenizing function is currently achieved by
stacking iron ore into different geometric shapes and then reclaiming
across these shapes slice-wise. Fig. 1 illustrates the ideal cross-sections
resulted by three stacking methods. Out of the three, chevron stacking
is very popular because of its simplicity and convenience. It is formed
by moving the stacker forwards and backwards over the predefined
length at an almost constant speed. The boom lifts a little at each end. Ide-
ally, poured materials from the end of the boom form a thin layer with a
triangular cross-section. Layers are stacked on top of each other after the
zigzag motion is completed. When a chevron stockpile is recovered using
⁎ Corresponding author. Tel.: +61 8 8303 3556.
E-mail addresses: shi.zhao@adelaide.edu.au (S. Zhao), tien-fu.lu@adelaide.edu.au
(T.-F. Lu), benk@matrixgroup.com.au (B. Koch), alanh@matrixgroup.com.au
(A. Hurdsman).
a Bucket Wheel Reclaimer (BWR), which has a rotating wheel with
buckets mounted on the tip of the boom, perpendicularly to the stacking
direction, materials in these layers are simultaneously scooped up by
buckets and completely mixed inside the rotating wheel. Consequently,
the grade variability of reclaimed iron-ore is reduced. In order to obtain
a uniform composition, a stockpile may have over one hundred thin
layers. Or, the uniformity of a stockpile can be improved by repeating
stacking and reclaiming operations several times. Because both stacking
and reclaiming aim to minimize the variation in the quality grade, they
are collectively referred to as blending in this paper.
According to blending operations, a stockpile always has four phases
across its life-cycle, as shown in Fig. 2. These phases are stacking,
awaiting reclaiming, reclaiming and awaiting stacking. If all blending
activities throughout the stockpile life-cycle are based on accurate qual-
ity information of ore-bodies and real geometric shapes of layers, it will
lead to an effective and efficient quality control plan. However, the qual-
ity data with the highest degree of accuracy cannot be available in a real
time framework due to the limitation of current sampling techniques.
There always exists two to three hours in delay to obtain the assay
result. More details on these sampling techniques and hardware are
covered by Gerlach et al. (2002) and Petersen et al. (2004). Neverthe-
less, delivered iron ore has to be processed and stacked to save storage
space. That is to say, in the stacking phase, operations may have to be
based on prior quality information from mining sites, which may be
out of date. Similar problems also occur in the reclaiming phase.
To maintain a relatively constant quality grade of delivered iron ore,
reclaiming operations have to frequently suspend and wait for the

0301-7516/$ – see front matter © 2013 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.
http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.minpro.2013.09.009
62 S. Zhao et al. / International Journal of Mineral Processing 125 (2013) 61–77
Fig. 1. Ideal cross sections of linear stockpiles and layers generated by different stacking method.
assay result. Furthermore, cross-sections of stockpiles are asymmetrical
and heterogeneous in reality and dynamic shapes of these cross-
sections are also not acquirable using current stockpile management
systems. Because of such insufficient quality and geometric information,
current quality management performs relatively more poorly than
expected. Based on onsite investigations of several major iron-ore
facilities in remote Western Australia, together with the feedback
from companies such as SKM (Sinclair Knight Merz — consulting
engineers), Rio Tinto and BHP Billiton, it can be concluded that
stockpiled products are currently being recovered at approximately
50% of their potential engineering productive rates (Lu, 2008). A
relatively small rate increase will lead to significant revenue returns.
2. Previous work
This section reviews current research efforts and industrial processes
regarding the modelling of stockpiles for quality management and ex-
plores a need for further development of 3D real-time stockpile models.
2.1. Industry practice in quality control
For iron-ore suppliers, quality control is applied throughout the pro-
duction process. These management activities aim to build a stockpile
that meets a particular target grade for ship-loading operations. To com-
plete a stockpile, blasting operations are based on the previous explora-
tion and assessment results. Blasted iron ore is then crushed (primary
and secondary crushing) and screened into lump and fine components.
Separated lumps and fines are stacked to form stockpiles according to
their quality grade. Train loadings are also arranged based on the quality
and quantity requirements and capacity constraints of both the mine and
the port. At the port, offloaded iron ore can be mixed with other high- or
low-grade raw materials to adjust the averaged quality. Tertiary or qua-
ternary crushing may also be applied when needed. Stacking and
Fig. 2. Effective quality control across four phases in a stockpile life-cycle.
reclaiming is selectively performed afterwards to meet the quality
criteria. Such operation mode requires a very tight connection between
the port and the mine. Any unexpected problems will cause delays and
lower the system efficiency. Also, the use of two handling systems poten-
tially waste valuable storage space and increase handling costs.
Instead of having two storage facilities, mined iron ore is directly load-
ed onto trains from different mining sites and transported to the port. At
the port, iron ore is mixed, crushed, screened and stacked into stockpiles.
Under such transportation mode, only the port serves as a focal point for
quality control. This mode saves handling costs but increases the com-
plexity in quality management due to the difference in quality between
mining sites. For the same reason, blending operations has to be based
on prior knowledge from mining sites. As a result, the quality grade of
the stockpile becomes more difficult to estimate over time.
Furthermore, current reclaiming algorithms employed in BWRs op-
erate in a semi-automatic mode. The first cut into a stockpile has to be
manually activated. Then, the machine follows a pre-defined reclaiming
pattern to recover a stockpile. The quality of reclaimed material has to
be checked over a certain period of time. Consequently, reclaiming has
to be interrupted due to the existence of delays in receiving quality in-
formation. If any adjustments in quality are needed, the BWR has to
move among stockpiles to reclaim different quality materials based on
the operator's knowledge and experience. The entire reclaiming opera-
tions are inefficient.
In the commercial context, QMASTOR (QMASTOR, 2011) and
Indurad (Radar, 2011) choose laser or radar sensor to perceive stock-
piles and thereby to model stockpiles. 3D models were used to predict
the quality grade of the stockpile and avoid collisions between stock-
piles and BWRs. Additionally, 3D stockpile models were developed to
store quality and quantity information in a cubic-metre format by Sie-
mens (Gerlach, 2009). Even though no published paper that describes
these systems can be found, it is apparent from their websites, images,
videos and contact emails that these systems are either highly
 S. Zhao et al. / International Journal of Mineral Processing 125 (2013) 61–77
Fig. 3. Continuous profile scanning of a stockpile along its longitude direction.
customized, which means they are not mobile and thus need to be con-
figured according to site specifications, or they are working offline with-
out the ability to update information in real time.
2.2. Research findings in stockpile modelling
Generally, there are two approaches to model stockpiles in stockpile
management systems. The first considers the variability in quality of the
iron-ore body as a signal or a function in one-dimensional domain.
Stockpiles are more likely modelled to be abstract concepts and are rep-
resented as tabular or pictorial formats in such approaches. The second
intends to build volumetric models of real stockpiles and use geometric
characteristics to analyse the grade variability or achieve automatic
operations.
2D models have been used since the 1980s. A statistical bed blending
theory was firstly suggested by Gerstel (1977). The material flow on the
conveyor belt was considered as a discrete time signal and the quality
characteristics, including the average, the standard deviation, the vari-
ance and the covariance were described by functions. An exponential
function was used to approximate the covariance function to estimate
the standard deviation of the input and output flows. The blending effi-
ciency was judged by the quotient of these two standard deviations.
Equations deduced in this paper can be used to estimate the long term
and short term fluctuations of a material property and to determine
the number of layers required to obtain a certain blending efficiency.
Further, Gy claimed that the use of statistical theory wrongly assumed
that standard deviations of the material flow are not correlated with
one another. He presented a new variographic theory to suppress the
continuous input variations for a steady output quality grade (Gy,
1981). However, some assumptions in these two blending theories do
not hold in real operations, such as that all cross-sections of a stockpile
are identical, that all layers have the same uniform thickness and the
material in each layer is uniformly distributed along the pile. Addition-
ally, two conical ends of the chevron stockpile were not considered for
quality calculation in these studies.
To assist the decision-making in blending, different optimal ap-
proaches were studied by researchers from various disciplines, such as
Fig. 4. Point data after pre-processing (points were re-sampled for display purpose). a) Raw laser measurement data after calibration. b) Points belong to the stockpile and its base. c)
Boundary detected and highlighted in red on the stockpile after Gaussian filtering.
63
goal programming (Lyu et al., 1995), genetic algorithm (Dahal et al.,
2003) and ‘pain function’ (Everett, 2007). In these approaches, a stock-
pile was described by a mathematical equation which is formulated ac-
cording to realistic operational and technological constrains. For
example, Everett introduced a stress vector to describe the deviations
of four quality elements (iron, silica, alumina and calcium oxide) in
iron ore. The quality of arrived iron ore was judged by this vector and re-
sulted in an aggregate stress parameter. The aggregation in stress vector
will finally result in a stockpile in ‘pain’ (Everett, 1996). Accordingly, the
best strategy is to minimize the increment in the stress vector of a stock-
pile in blending operations. Simulation results indicated that these
approaches had cumulative effects in improving the quality control
of stockpiles. However, these 2D models concentrate improving the ef-
ficiency in the stacking phase. They are not able to effective guide the
reclaiming phase. The selection of the destination stockpile is deter-
mined by human operators. The first cutting into the stockpile has to
be activated manually. This is inefficient and unreliable.
Another important issue in 2D modelling techniques is the availabil-
ity of the quality information during the blending. The above-reviewed
research articles all assumed that the quality data used for blending are
up-to-date and has the highest degree of accuracy. However, as pointed
out by Everett, the quality of iron ore cannot be accurately assayed until
it is crushed (Everett, 2007). There is always several hours' worth of
delay when trying to obtain final assay results. To save storage space,
lump and fine components may have to be stacked right after the
crushing and screening processes. That is to say, at least, quality infor-
mation used in the stacking phase has to be based on the prior quality
knowledge suggested by the mining site. Such information is not accu-
rate because the crushing and screening change the quality. Errors are
easily accumulated throughout the stockpile life-cycle using 2D models.
Other than modelling stockpiles for quality calculation, a group of re-
searchers developed contour models for automatic operations. Choi
et al. extracted contour lines from laser range data using image process-
ing techniques. These contour lines are used to determine the optimal
landing point of the bucket wheel based on the inverse kinematic equa-
tions of the reclaimer (Choi et al., 1999). Also, Lee et al. depicted a con-
tour map with several stockpiles by polygons and defined the safe
operation region using isohypse voronoi diagram (Lee et al., 2006).
This map is then applied to the automatic obstacle avoidance and opti-
mal moving path planning system. In these two approaches, contour
lines placed on the map represent lines of equal elevation above the
land-surface datum. Therefore, contour models are essentially 2D
models. The use of such models for quality calculation results in similar
problems described in the previous paragraph.
3D models are also developed by a number of researchers. To predict
the blending at the conical ends, Robinson and Ross used three differen-
tial equations to describe a chevron stockpile, in which the angle of re-
pose was assumed to be 45° (Robinson and Ross, 1991). This model
provides a method to calculate the volume and the grade of a stockpile
using simple equations. However, these differential functions are based
on the shape of a theoretical chevron stockpile. No real measurement
data were involved in the modelling procedures. To accommodate this
64 S. Zhao et al. / International Journal of Mineral Processing 125 (2013) 61–77
Fig. 5. A Fourier curve for a single laser scanning when n = 4. The sum of squared error (SSE) is 33.34 and the R-square is 0.9998. If n is increased to 8, the SSE and the R-square is decreased
to 2.153 and 1 respectively.
model to a real stockpile with an arbitrary repose angle, they advised to
change the density parameter of the material. For example, if the
repose angle of a real stockpile is 35° and the density of material is
2 kg/m3, the modified density used for quantity calculation should be
2tan(35) kg/m3. The authors cannot find evidences to support this
assumption.
A chevron stockpile was modelled as a triangular prism by ignoring
the conical ends and assumed to have prefect triangular cross-sections
along its stacking direction (Pavloudakis and Agioutantis, 2003). To cal-
culate the quality, the stockpile was partitioned into a group of sub-
prisms evenly along its longitudinal axis, which is called the ‘method
of section’ in this paper. Every sub-prism or segment is considered as
a volume unit for blending operations. The quality grades of these
segments were based on the daily average property plus normal distrib-
uted noise. The output quality of a pile was thereby calculated by com-
bining the quality grade of every segment. Also, they introduced the
‘method of benches’. When a stockpile is recovered, the reclaimer
loads material above a fixed elevation which results in a bench after dig-
ging. They also suggested that the most economical way to recover a
stockpile was to use three bench levels. The quality of reclaimed mate-
rial was estimated by the method of section and the method of bench
for comparison purpose. Results indicate that the blending efficiency
is obviously improved by increasing the number of layers when the
windrow stacking method is used. The combination of geometric
shapes and quality properties is a great advance in stockpile modelling.
However, this model itself is not a perfect representation of a real stock-
pile. Additionally, a stockpile may contain material from different sites
and their grades in turn may not conform to the normal distribution.
Lu and Myo described an algorithm to optimise the BWR reclaiming
trajectory to meet the target grade required by customers. In this paper,
a stockpile is also represented by a triangular prism. The prism was
partitioned into a group of small prism-shaped voxels and those voxels
Fig. 6. Curves fitted for the middle section using two different methods.
were assigned different quality properties (Lu and Myo, 2011). The qual-
ity of reclaimed material is a combination of these voxels which are ex-
cavated by the reclaimer. The kinematic equations derived by Lu (2009)
were used to monitor the position of the BWR. The optimal function was
to minimize the movement of the BWR under the constraint of the qual-
ity and quantity requirements. This paper successfully utilizes the 3D
stockpile model for quality control and process optimization. However,
the excavating surface caused by a BWR cannot simply approximate to
triangular prisms. Also, a stockpile always has multiple layers and the
quality of these layers may be different. When partitioning a stockpile
into voxel spaces, a voxel may contain material from different layers.
Therefore, the quality may vary inside the voxel. This problem is not
addressed because the real geometric shape of the stockpile is not
available.
2.3. Research objective
Various modelling algorithms are presented for stockpile manage-
ment. However, there is still a need to build a highly accurate 3D real-
time volumetric model which is able to dynamically represent four
phases of a stockpile and continuously guide the blending operations
throughout a stockpile's life-cycle. With this 3D geometric model, it is
possible to re-calculate the quality grade of a stockpile when the most
accurate quality information is available. It is also possible to associate
the quality data with geometric information which will lead to real-
time optimum stacking/reclaiming operations for consistent product
quality grades. In view of this, this paper aims to establish modelling ap-
proaches to build a realistic model of a stockpile in real-time and store
the model in mathematical format for future applications. Two model-
ling approaches using a laser scanner are delivered to achieve this objec-
tive. The rest of this paper is organised as follows. Section 3 presents two
approaches for automatic 3D stockpile modelling. Section 4 describes a
 S. Zhao et al. / International Journal of Mineral Processing 125 (2013) 61–77 65

Fig. 7. Grid partitioning reduces residuals in surface fitting. Runge's phenomena can be seen around four corners if the 10th polynomial function is used to fit the surface.

laser measurement governing system to improve the accuracy of model-
ling. Section 5 outlines the experiment set-ups and results with discus-
sions. Finally, conclusions and suggestions are presented in Section 5.
3. Automatic 3D stockpile modelling
The general aim of this study is to generate a dynamic 3D life-cycle
model for stockpile quality management. More specifically, this study
aims to verify whether it is possible to continuously map stockpile sur-
face and accurately build the stockpile model in real-time by combining
the image processing and mathematical regression techniques.
To model a stockpile with multiple layers, one of the best solutions is
to mount a laser scanner onto the boom tip of the BWR. Thereby, cross-
sections of a stockpile can be captured by the scanner during blending
operations. However, for testing and research purposes, a 3 DOF laser
scanning system was adapted in this paper. As illustrated in Fig. 3, this
system drives a 2D laser range finder (SICK LMS200) along the z axis
and scans objects beneath it. The travelling distance is measured by an-
other 1D laser range finder. The coordinator definition and kinematic
equations for this system have been noted in a previous study (Lu
et al., 2011). The fuchsia foliar field swept by the laser beam at a z posi-
tion is referred to as a single scan in this paper.
3.1. Pre-processing
Pre-processing aims to calibrate the system measurement,
smooth laser data and extract stockpile boundaries. Due to imperfect
mounting conditions, there exists an inclined angle between the sur-
face generated from laser and the horizontal plane. This angle (0.7°)
is compensated while converting laser range measurements to X and
Y coordinators defined by Fig. 3. To extract the stockpile from the
point clouds, image processing techniques developed in the previous
study (Zhao et al., 2012b) are used. It has been experimentally prov-
en to be efficient and accurate. A 3 × 3 Gaussian filter is finally ap-
plied to filter the noise. Fig. 4 plots laser measurement data during
the pre-processing stage.
3.2. Wireframe model
Regarding the BWR stacking and laser scanning pattern, a wireframe
model, which is similar to a fishbone, is first developed. For this
wireframe model, the spine is the contour line of the stockpile when it
is projected onto the YZ plane and the bones are LMS200 measurements
in every single scan in the XY plane. To generate this fishbone model, a
non-linear least square curve fitting was employed. The fitting function

Fig. 8. Reclaimed surface generated by the point governance system.

66 S. Zhao et al. / International Journal of Mineral Processing 125 (2013) 61–77

Table 1 this method, stockpiles can be represented by a group of Fourier curves.

Particles used for stockpile layers. Therefore, it is called the ‘Fourier model’ in this paper.
Layer Material Average particle size Expecting height Measured height
3.2.2. Universal Fourier model
1 Red scoria 20 mm 180 mm 184 mm
2 Blue basalt 10 mm 210 mm 208 mm Normally, a completed linear stockpile has two conical ends and a
3 Brown quartzite 2–6 mm 230 mm 230 mm middle section. The transverse cross-sections of the middle section
4 Washed sand 1/16–1/8 mm 250 mm 252 mm along the stacking direction always have similar shapes. Based on this
observation, a universal Fourier model can be generated to save the
computer storage. In this model, those profiles along the z axis which
used for this model is the Fourier series, which is derived from the geo-
are highly similar to each other are described by one Fourier series set.
metric profile of the stockpile and has the proven ability of approximat-
For example, if the middle section of an unclaimed stockpile has similar
ing differently shaped curves.
profiles, it can be represented by one Fourier curve. Using this method,
the number of parameters needing to be stored and processed can be re-
3.2.1. Fourier model
duced greatly. To obtain such a generic Fourier curve, it is required to
For each single scan in the XY plane, a Fourier series representation
minimize the residual sum of squares H for a set of laser measurements:
is given by (1):

y ¼ f ðx; a0 ; a1 ; :…; an ; b1 ; …bn Þ M X

X N     2
XL H¼ w xk;i f xk;i −yi; j ð4Þ
ð1Þ
a0 þ ðan cosnωx þ bn sinnωxÞ k¼1 i¼1
n¼1

where f(xk;i) is the Fourier series and defined by (3) and M means mea-
surements along the z axis and N means the number of measurements
where (a0,a1,a2,…,aL,b1,b2,…,bL,ω) are the Fourier coefficients. A least
taken by LMS200. Again, the default value for the weight function is 1.
square regression for the Fourier coefficient estimation is to minimize
To minimize H is to let:
the residual sum of squares J for the data pair (xi,yi):

X
N ∂H ∂H ∂H ∂H
2 ¼ 0; ¼ 0; ¼ 0 and ¼0 ð5Þ
J¼ wðxi Þð f jðxi Þj−yi Þ ð2Þ ∂a0 ∂an ∂bn ∂ω
i¼1

where n = 1,…,L
where N is the number of measurements taken by LMS200, w(xi) is the
In real practice, the trust-region-reflective algorithm sometimes
weight function and the default value is 1. This minimum requires:
gave wrong results in resolving these nonlinear equations (as shown
in Fig. 6). This is because the iterations are terminated when a local min-
∂J ∂J ∂J
¼ 0; ¼ 0 and ¼0 ð3Þ imum is found. For this specific problem, a linear conversion algorithm
∂am ∂bm ∂ω
is proposed by assuming that ω is a constant to find the global mini-
mum. Eq. (5) can be rewritten if ω is a constant:
Eq. (3) can be solved using the trust-region-reflective method
(Coleman and Li, 1996) which is an improvement on the Newton itera- !
N  
M X
X  
tive method. To shorten the calculation speed of iterative searching, an ∂ f xk;i −yk;i
initial value of a0 and ω is estimated. Other coefficients are not estimat- ∂H k¼1 i¼1
¼ ¼0
ed because from the signal processing point of view, the shape of the ∂a0 ∂a0 !
signal is largely determined by the direct component a0 and fundamen- M X
X N     
∂ cosnω xk;i f xk;i −yk;i
tal frequency ω. The estimation is based on the ideal stockpile model ∂H k¼1 i¼1
which has a triangular cross-section. Because the height of a stockpile ¼ ¼0
∂an ∂an !
and the repose angle of a particular bulk material are always easy to ob- X
M X
N     
tain, the initial value of a0 and ω can be solved by Fourier transfer if the ∂ sinnω xk;i f xk;i −yk;i
cross-section of a stockpile is considered as a non-periodic triangular ∂H k¼1 i¼1
¼ ¼0
wave. A Fourier curve obtained after fitting is shown in Fig. 5. With ∂bn ∂bn

Fig. 9. Experiment setup. a) A laboratory scaled stockpile under the laser scanner. b) The reclaiming arm used in the experiment.
 S. Zhao et al. / International Journal of Mineral Processing 125 (2013) 61–77 67

Fig. 10. Variation in layers of the stockpile during the experiment. a) The 1st layer. b) The stockpile during the stacking. c) The 4th layer. d) The stockpile after 1st reclaiming. e) The stock-
pile during the reclaiming. f) The stockpile after reclaiming.

or series represents the energy of the signal. In other words, the maximum
! height of the fitted curve is largely determined by a0. To improve accu-
M X
X N  
∂ f xk;i racy, the a0 of this generic curve along the z axis is replaced by the a0 ac-
k¼1 i¼1
M X
X N quired from the ‘Fourier model’. Models generated using this method
¼
yk;i are named the ‘universal model’ in this paper.
∂a0 k¼1 i¼1 !
M X
X N    
∂ cosnω xk;i f xk;i 3.3. Surface model
M X
X N   ð6Þ
k¼1 i¼1
¼ cosnω xk;i yk;i
∂an Wireframe model is a good fit for the stacking but possibly is not
! k¼1 i¼1
M X
X N     suitable for the reclaiming. If the laser scanner is mounted at the end
∂ sinnω xk;i f xk;i
XM X N   of the boom, both the laser scanner and the boom will have the same
k¼1 i¼1
¼ sinnω xk;i yk;i moving trajectory. In the stacking operation, this trajectory is a straight
∂an k¼1 i¼1 line. While in the reclaiming operation, this trajectory is a jagged pat-
A convenient way to express (6) in matrix format:
tern which is formed by the slewing and translational motion of the
XX  boom. As a result, all scanning lines are tilted and not parallel with the

 ∂H  XY surface, which is illustrated in Fig. 3. Although such tilted scan

 ∂a0   XX  lines do not affect curving fitting procedures, they will cause problems
 X X ∂H    
  a0   X X yk;i  in volume calculation. Also, to further decrease data stored in computer
    
 ∂a1  a1   cosωyk;i  memory, a surface model is considered.
    
 ⋮  ⋮   
 X X ∂H    X X ⋮ 
  a  ¼  
  n   cosLωy k;i ⇒D  U ¼ V ð7Þ 3.3.1. Least square regression
 ∂aL  b   X X 
XX  1   sinωyk;i  For this surface model, the height displacement (y) from the XZ
 ∂H  ⋮   
    X X ⋮  plane is described as follows:
 ∂b 
0 n b   

 
 sinLωyk;i 
⋮
 X X ∂H  X X
p−1 q−1
i j
  y ¼ f ðx; zÞ ¼ aaij x z ð10Þ
 
∂bL i¼0 j¼0
For each given ω, the remainder of the Fourier coefficients can be
calculated by where aaij is the coefficient matrix
−1 A least square surface regression is to:
U¼D V ð8Þ
2 32
Or we can say U is a function of ω: X
n   p−1
XX q−1  
w xi ; z j 4 aaij x z −f xi ; z j 5 ¼ min
i j
Sðaa ;…;aa Þ ¼ ð11Þ
U ¼ F ðωÞ ð9Þ 0 pq
g¼1 i¼0 j¼0

Combined with (4), the global minimum can be found using itera-
tion searching. Because the boundary condition can be easily obtained where w(xi,zj) is the weight function and its default value is equal to 1.
from the previous ‘Fourier model’, the iterative searching strategy is The solution for (11) is:
able to find the best fitted curve in an effective way (see Fig. 6). Further-
∂S
more the accuracy of this model can be further improved. From the sig- ¼0 ðij ¼ 0; …pqÞ ð12Þ
nal processing perspective, the direction component a0 of the Fourier ∂aij
68 S. Zhao et al. / International Journal of Mineral Processing 125 (2013) 61–77

Table 2 A matrix solution for (12):

Fitting accuracy v.s. computation time for a single scan (unit: time s; SSE mm2).
0   1
0 1
4th-Fourier 6th-Fourier 8th-Fourier ðφ00 ; φ00 Þðφ00 ; φ01 Þ … φ00 ; φp−1q−1 aa00
B C
B C @ ⋮ A
time SSE time SSE time SSE @ ⋮   ⋱  ⋮ A
φp−1q−1 ; φ00 φp−1q−1 φ01 ⋯ φp−1q−1 ; φp−1q−1 aap−1q−1
1st layer 0.0307 26.817 0.0225 8.54 0.0332 6.47
0 1
2nd layer 0.0288 40.444 0.0442 18.95 0.0278 5.54 ðφ00 ; f Þ
3rd layer 0.0476 102.27 0.0368 16.01 0.0428 5.75 ¼ @ ⋮  AorD  U ¼ V
4th layer 0.0392 164.21 0.0278 19.72 0.0359 15.38 φp−1q−1 ; f ð13Þ
1st reclaim 0.0893 146.29 0.0795 35.91 0.0883 13.47
3rd reclaim 0.0415 245.99 0.0556 52.57 0.0610 19.91
5th reclaim 0.0331 203.66 0.0499 35.51 0.0825 16.91 where φ00 = x0y0, φ01 = x0y1, … φp − 1q − 1 = xp − 1yq − 1
7th reclaim 0.0507 227.29 0.0725 48.34 0.0481 14.30 Similar to the universe Fourier model, the coefficient matrix U can be
11th reclaim 0.0415 279.44 0.0646 72.49 0.0834 26.37 calculated using (8).
13th reclaim 0.0419 384.24 0.0538 47.88 0.0615 19.57
To improve the accuracy of fitting, two methods were considered
Average 0.0421 182.06 0.0498 35.59 0.0558 14.37
and tested. The first one increases the order of the polynomial equation.
However, it may lead to Runge's phenomena (Runge, 1901), which

Fig. 11. R-squared and residuals using different order Fourier functions at the stacking phase.
 S. Zhao et al. / International Journal of Mineral Processing 125 (2013) 61–77
Fig. 12. R-squared and residuals using different order Fourier functions at the reclaiming phase.
describe the oscillation at the edges when constructing the interpola-
tion using a high-degree polynomial function. These phenomena allow
more errors in modelling. The second method is to partition the point
set into several subsets by a checkerboard pattern. It is referred to as
the grid partitioning method and these subsets are called patches in
this paper. After partition, each patch is fitted by a polynomial function.
Experiments indicated that models generated by this method greatly
reduce the residuals (see Fig. 7). More results will be presented in the
experiment and result section.
3.3.2. Point cloud governance for reclaiming
The helical-shaped cutting surface, generated by the slewing motion
of the wheel and the rotation motion of the bucket, may be difficult to
reach by the laser beam during the real reclaiming process. This is be-
cause the laser sensor is rotating around the slewing axis of the BWR
but the scanning plane of the laser is perpendicular to the ground. As
a consequence, the number of points can be used for fitting in each
patch is reduced when the point set is partitioned into patches. This
may cause over-fitting. Meanwhile, fallen ores may block the laser
beam and dust may bias laser readings. It is important to eliminate
such inappropriate or wrong measurement noises to improve the
69
modelling accuracy. However, neither adding another degree of free-
dom to the laser sensor nor rescanning the surface is a feasible solution
to the real-time application.
Regarding this problem, a simulated surface is generated based on
the kinematics of the BWR to interpolate new observation points and
to evaluate laser measurements against the noise. To create this surface,
it is assumed that the bucket wheel is rotating at a constant speed and
each bucket scoops up material evenly during the reclaiming phase.
Under such assumptions, the wheel with buckets can be considered as
a cylinder. Thus, reclaiming is the Boolean subtraction of the cylinder
from the stockpile and the cutting surface is the exterior surface of the
cylinder. In this case, both the cylinder and stockpile are represented
by points rather than solid objects in computer graphics. The cylinder
(point set) is created according to the radius of the wheel and width
of the bucket. The stockpile (point set) is the original laser measurement
before reclaiming. The location of the cylinder during the reclaiming is
calculated by kinematics equations derived by Lu (Lu, 2009). By evalu-
ating the Euclidean distance between each point in two sets, the sub-
traction operation can be performed. Repeating such operations along
the trajectory of the bucket wheel, a simulated stockpile can be obtained
(see Fig. 8).
70 S. Zhao et al. / International Journal of Mineral Processing 125 (2013) 61–77

Fig. 13. Residuals increase at the top corner regarding to different particle sizes.

Fig. 14. A universal Fourier curve for the middle section generated by a 6th-order Fourier series.
 S. Zhao et al. / International Journal of Mineral Processing 125 (2013) 61–77 71

Table 4
Surface modelling accuracy v.s. time (unit time s; SSE mm2 × 106).

6th polynomials 8th polynomials 10th polynomials

time SSE time SSE time SSE

1st layer 6.51 1.466 21.52 0.2895 54.24 0.2438

2nd layer 6.42 1.175 29.65 0.2457 53.84 0.2235
3rd layer 7.27 1.154 32.66 0.1745 60.65 0.0994
4th layer 8.11 1.145 33.76 0.2514 68.23 0.1961
1st reclaim 8.74 1.280 21.52 0.3081 74.31 0.2473
3rd reclaim 9.74 0.835 29.65 0.3123 81.18 0.1783
5th reclaim 9.51 0.851 32.66 0.3341 79.54 0.2092
7th reclaim 9.83 0.891 33.76 0.3707 81.12 0.2246
11th reclaim 9.66 0.839 21.52 0.3960 80.45 0.2984
18th reclaim 9.98 0.967 29.65 0.8346 83.34 0.2151
Average 8.71 1.0438 29.230 0.31126 81.03 0.21769

Because there are not many true replicate points in the merged data
set, an approximate replicate data set is generated by clustering multi-
ple points whose distance is within 2mm in XZ plane. Then, their centre
in XZ plane is calculated and rounded. Rounded x- and z-coordinate are
assigned to these clustered points. Thereby, approximate replicates are
obtained and the variance σij of these replicate points can be calculated.
With the σij and yij, the log(σ) and log(θ) can be estimated by the linear
regression and the weight can be obtained using (14) after σ and θ are
known.
Fig. 15. Fourier and universal Fourier models of a stockpile. The middle section of the uni-
versal Fourier model is highlighted in blue. The spine lines are displayed in green.
4. Experiment and results

A decision was taken to create a scale-down chevron stockpile in the

The simulated stockpile is shifted and aligned to the laser scanning
data using the Iterative Closest Point (ICP) algorithm (Besl and McKay,
1992). The main reason to align these two point sets is because: ores
generally fall from the stockpile during reclaiming and there always
exist some spaces between the trimmed stockpile and the bucket
wheel. After alignment, only the cutting surface is inserted into the orig-
inal data set. To use these simulated points for stockpile modelling, a
weighted least square regression is used. This is because the standard
deviation of the error is not constant across two sets. In statistics, the
weight is inversely proportional to the variance. However, because the
variance is unknown, it is modelled by the power-of-the-mean method
(Carroll and Ruppert, 1988). For every variance at a point (xi, zj) the wij
is:
1 1
wij ¼ ¼  
σ ij σ y θ
ij
where σij is the variance of the laser height measurement yij, σ and θ are
two unknown variables.
To calculate the σ and θ, a simple linear regression model is used by
taking the logarithm of each side of the equation:
   
log σ ij ¼ logðσ Þ þ θlog yij
laboratory environment to test the proposed modelling algorithms. This
was mainly for two reasons as confirmed by the industry partner
Matrixgroup: the experiment venue and the 3D scanning device. It is
difficult to negotiate with the mining sites or exporting ports to convert
a BWR into a mobile scanner and scan a real stockpile because the ex-
periment could suspend their daily operations. To ensure this
laboratory-scale model has essential features of a real stockpile, it was
built by a human operator according to the stacking and reclaiming pro-
cedures by a BWR.
4.1. Materials and equipments
To test the performance of modelling algorithms against different
sized particles, the model was designed to have four layers and each
layer was stacked according to different sized particles. Because mea-
ð14Þ
surement errors from the laser are largely independent from the target
colour and texture, gravel used for landscaping is selected based on the
particle size for making those four layers (see Table 1). Among these
particles, the sizes of basalt and quartzite are closed to the size of the
real fine ore product provided by the Matrixgroup.
Gravel particles are filled into a cylindrical container and poured
down to a testing platform to simulate the stacking process. The dimen-
sions of the platform are 1800 mm in length, 1000 mm in width and
ð15Þ
1230 mm in height. Three reference lines are marked on the platform

Table 3
Volume calculated using wireframe models (unit: volume 104 × cm3, error %).

Raw 4th-Fourier Error 6th-Fourier Error % 4th-Universal Error 6th-Universal Error

1st layer 2.03666 2.03630 −0.0188 2.03705 0.0191 2.03730 0.0314 2.03692 0.0128
2nd layer 2.95675 2.95752 0.0260 2.95723 0.0162 2.95678 0.0010 2.95750 0.0254
3rd layer 4.30362 4.30049 −0.0727 4.30366 0.0009 4.30825 0.1075 4.30681 0.0741
4th layer 6.81162 6.79486 −0.2461 6.81197 0.0051 6.83791 0.3859 6.82877 0.2518
1st reclaim 6.65806 6.65041 −0.1149 6.65438 −0.0553 6.62722 −0.4631 6.62712 −0.4632
2nd reclaim 6.57272 6.56245 −0.1563 6.57028 −0.0371 6.57397 0.0190 6.57862 0.0897
3rd reclaim 6.48189 6.48437 0.0383 6.47964 −0.0347 6.41972 −0.9591 6.42362 −0.8990
4th reclaim 6.40154 6.40321 0.0261 6.40035 −0.0186 6.31811 −1.3033 6.33664 −1.0138
72 S. Zhao et al. / International Journal of Mineral Processing 125 (2013) 61–77

Table 5 During the experiment, the travelling velocity of the LMS200 was con-
SSE and time cost using grid partitioning method (unit time s; SSE mm2 × 104). trolled to be at 12 m/min, which is close to the average travelling
6×6 7×7 8×8 speed of a BWR. The sampling rate of the O1D100 was 20Hz to measure
the travelling distance. To obtain more measurements from the scale-
SSE
6th order 1.485 0.938 1.089 down model, the angular resolution of the LMS200 was 0.25° and the
8th order 1.396 1.259 1.384 scanning range was 8 m. Under such a configuration, no obvious distor-
10th order 0.928 0.604 0.794 tion caused by the longitudinal motion of the LMS200 was induced in
time
the point cloud data. This is because the LMS200 scanning speed (less
6th order 11.48 11.66 12.15
8th order 37.92 38.50 39.95 than 5 ms for a single scan) is much faster than its moving speed. If
10th order 94.23 95.67 99.40 the scanning system is applied directly to a full scale stockpile, the angu-
lar resolution could be increased to 1° to cooperate with the high mov-
ing speed of the BWR and the long scanning range. However, one
potential limitation may cause by the low sampling rate and the short
scanning range of the O1D100. It needs to be replaced by a long-range
to guide the stacking operation: the middle line, the starting line and the
and high-sampling-rate displacement sensor to generate sufficient mea-
finishing line. During the stacking, the container repeats the zigzag mo-
surements along the BWR travelling direction for modelling. The entire
tion until the stockpile reach to its pre-defined height. Table 1 also com-
setup is shown in Fig. 9a and the Fig. 9b shows the simplified reclaiming
pares the expected stacking height and measured height after stacking
arm.
is completed. A simplified reclaiming arm is developed to simulate the
reclaiming process. The luffing, slewing and travelling motions of the
4.2. Experiment procedure
reclaiming arm are manually controlled. The bucket wheel is replaced
by a tube object by assuming the rotation speed of the bucket wheel is
To ensure that the scale-down model can represent a real stockpile,
a constant. Scooping activities of the buck wheel are also achieved man-
the stacking and reclaiming are simulated by the followed procedures.
ually. More detailed stacking and reclaiming procedures applied to sim-
The stacking procedure:
ulate the blending operations are presented in the next section.
The 3D laser scanning system, located above the testing platform, 1. Lower the cylindrical container (full of gravel) at the intersection
contains a LMS200 laser scanner, a QPT-50 pan-and-tilt platform, a point of the starting line and the middle line and always maintain
O1D100 laser range finder, a step motor with controller and a number the clear height between the container and the stockpile surface to
of relevant mechanical parts. The LMS200 together with the QPT-50 is be around 30 mm.
mounted on a linear track and driven by the motor. The linear track is 2. Gradually tilt the container and allow particles to fall at a constant
fixed on a metal frame, which is 2525 mm above the ground. The speed due to their own gravity.
LMS200 can travel 1230 mm along the linear track and scan profiles of 3. Move the container linearly along the middle line at a constant speed
the stockpile and its travelling distance is sampled by the O1D100. once particles start to fall.

Fig. 16. Surface models obtained using grid partitioning method.

 S. Zhao et al. / International Journal of Mineral Processing 125 (2013) 61–77 73

Table 6
Volume calculated using surface models (unit: volume 104 × cm3, error %).

1 × 1,n = 6 Error 6 × 6,n = 6 Error 6 × 6,n = 8 Error 9 × 9,n = 8 Error 9 × 9,n = 10 Error

1st layer 2.05970 1.13 2.03988 0.158 2.03729 0.0312 2.03894 0.112 2.0625403 1.27
2nd layer 2.96619 0.319 2.96166 0.166 2.96132 0.155 2.95656 −0.0062 2.9569786 0.00773
3rd layer 4.30596 0.054 4.30213 −0.0344 4.30223 −0.0321 4.30318 −0.0102 4.3033341 −0.00664
4th layer 6.78327 −0.416 6.80376 −0.115 6.80568 −0.0871 6.80934 −0.0335 6.8296094 0.264
1st reclaim 6.62244 −0.535 6.6464 −0.174 6.64957 −0.127 6.65080 −0.109 6.6536664 −0.066
2nd reclaim 6.54419 −0.434 6.56060 −0.184 6.56160 −0.169 6.56475 −0.121 6.5670151 −0.0868
3rd reclaim 6.46606 −0.244 6.46985 −0.186 6.47072 −0.172 6.47203 −0.152 6.4722863 −0.148
4th reclaim 6.41672 0.237 6.39386 −0.120 6.39451 −0.110 6.39594 −0.0873 6.3967234 −0.0752

4. Stop the motion when the container is empty and record its position.
5. Refill the container and repeat steps 1, 2 and 3 at the recorded point
until the container reaches the intersection point of the finishing line
and the middle line.
6. Reverse the moving direction of the container and repeat steps 1, 2, 3,
4 and 5.
7. Stop the stacking operation until the pre-defined height is reached.
8. Scan the stockpile and export the point data.
9. Stack another three layers using the same procedures and scan each
layer respectively.>
The reclaiming procedure:
1. Adjust the luffing angle (the angle between the boom and the tri-
pod centre axis) to 80° and select an initial reclaiming point.
2. Advance the arm centre 30 mm along the stacking direction.
3. Rotate the arm around its central axis (slewing) and allow the tube
to cut into the body of the pile.
4. Stop the slewing motion until the intrados of the tube is merged
into the stockpile.
5. Remove particles on the intrados of the tube.
6. Rotate the boom in the opposite direction until the tube and stock-
pile are separated.
7. Repeat steps 3, 4, 5 and 6 until the tube cut through the body with-
out any obvious particles that block the tube.
8. Scan the stockpile and export the scanning data.
9. Advance the arm centre another 30 mm and repeat steps 3, 4, 5, 6, 7
and 8.
10. Duplicate step 9 nine times.
11. Return the arm to its initial position and change the luffing angle to
70 degrees.
12. Reclaim the stockpile using the same procedures and scan the
stockpile respectively.
Four sets of scanning data were obtained after completing the stack-
ing procedure. They are named by layers in this paper, for example, the
1st layer refers to the layer made by the red scoria. Twenty sets of
reclaiming data were obtained and named in order regarding to the se-
quence of reclaiming steps. For example, the 1st reclaim refers to the
first reclaiming with the luffing angle of 80°. As another example, the
11th reclaim indicates the first reclaiming with the luffing angle of
70°. The stockpile in different states during the experiment is illustrated
in Fig. 10.

Fig. 17. Avoid the over-fitting by decreasing the degree of the polynomial function.
74 S. Zhao et al. / International Journal of Mineral Processing 125 (2013) 61–77
Fig. 18. Estimated weighting function generates a better fit.
4.3. Results
This section presents modelling results through the scanning data.
The computation time and accuracy are compared and discussed be-
cause they are two crucial factors in evaluating the real-time perfor-
mance of modelling algorithms.
4.3.1. Wireframe model
• Modelling time and accuracy
Table 2 compares the accuracy against the calculation time for a sin-
gle scan at z = 1000 mm. These results were obtained using an Intel
Q9400 Quad Core CPU with 4GB Ram in the Windows XP 32-bit opera-
tion system. Generally, the use of a higher order function increases the
accuracy at the expense of the processing time. However, as shown in
Table 2, the use of 6th- and 8th-order Fourier functions greatly im-
proved the accuracy without causing an obvious upward trend in time
consumption. The average time needed for fitting a single scan is still
better than 0.06s. This means Fourier models can be generated together
with the laser scanning procedure if the boundary of the stockpile is
known. Additionally, it has been observed that the time cost for the
4th Fourier fitting was longer than the 8th Fourier function in some
cases. This is mainly because a low order Fourier is not good at approx-
imating the partially reclaimed section of the stockpile. The fitting algo-
rithm would require more evaluations to satisfy the stop criterion.
Therefore, low order Fourier series are not recommended for real stock-
pile modelling. Further, over-fitting events frequently occur if the order
is higher than eight. This may be for two reasons: the small number of
points obtained from the scaled stockpile and the fitting algorithm itself.
Fig. 19. The ideal stockpile model and its measurement model after the Gaussian filtering.
The coefficient of determination (R-squared or R2) is the accuracy of
the predictor of independent variables on dependent variables, which is
a useful measure in determining the ‘goodness of fit’ in regression anal-
ysis. It ranges from 0 to 1 and the higher the coefficient of determina-
tion, the better the fit of a set of data. Figs. 11 and 12 plot fitting
results using different Fourier series with respect to stacking and
reclaiming phases. According to these figures, the coefficient of determi-
nation reaches 1 when the 6th-order Fourier series is used. The 8th-
order Fourier series can further minimize residuals but not the R2.
Another finding from Figs. 11 and 12 is that the maximum residual of
each layer always occurs around the top section of the stockpile. Also,
these maximum residuals increase when the particle sizes decrease.
For instance, the SSE (the sum of squared error) rises significantly
from 26.817 mm2 to 164.21 mm2 in Table 2 when the 4th-order Fourier
series is applied to different layers. In the experiment, a layer of large
particles, for example, the 1st layer in Fig. 13, has a small curvature
and the top section is relatively flat. By contrast, a layer of small particles
has a large curvature but a sharp top (the 4th layer). In mathematics,
such a sharp corner is called a cusp and the curve is not differentiable
at the corner point. Therefore, large residuals are detected around the
corner when the curve is approximated by a differentiable function.
Thus, relatively large errors are expected if small sized particles are
used. Similarly, if the boundary detection results are inaccurate and
slide to the testing platform, points belonging to the stockpile and the
ground base will form another sharp corner and thus affect the fit in
the wireframe model. For the same reason, these phenomena are diag-
nosed in the surface model and large residuals are more likely to happen
around the boundaries of the stockpile, because the observation points
used for fit contain both sections of the ground and the stockpile.
• Fourier model vs. universal Fourier model
Fig. 14 illustrates a fitted curve for the middle section of the second
layer using the 6th-order Fourier series. Fig. 15 compares the Fourier
model and the universal Fourier model generated by 4th-order Fourier
series. The average error is 0.824 mm for the Fourier model and
1.865 mm for the universal Fourier model respectively. Table 3 com-
pares the average volume and error in percentage terms calculated
based on these two algorithms. The SSE and R-squared are not com-
pared here because the volume is more important to evaluate a stock-
pile model in this specific application. According to these results, it can
be concluded that the use of universal Fourier model will not introduce
too many errors in volume calculation. Meanwhile, these results prove
that the use of a low order Fourier series decreases the fitting accuracy
but does not introduce obvious errors in volume calculation.
The wireframe models generated by the Fourier series demonstrate
a high degree of accuracy and reasonable computation time for real time
application. Users are able to choose different orders of the Fourier se-
ries according to accuracy and time requirements. Based on the experi-
mental results, it is recommended to use the 6th-order or the 8th-order
Fourier series for modelling and use universal Fourier model if possible.
Additionally, if under-fitting or over-fitting events are detected, it is still
possible to adjust the order of the Fourier series to acquire a desirable
result.
 S. Zhao et al. / International Journal of Mineral Processing 125 (2013) 61–77 75

Fig. 20. The 8th-Fourier model overlay on the measurement model.

4.3.2. Surface model contain both the ground and the stockpile. For example, 3 patches are
• Modelling time and accuracy over-fitted when the stockpile is partitioned into 10 × 10 patches and
fitted using the 10th polynomial function. This is mainly for two rea-
Previous results indicate that high-order Fourier functions im-
sons. First, the total number of data points used for fitting is less than
prove accuracy without obvious increments in computation time.
the total number of unknown coefficients and results in Runge's phe-
By contrast, opposite facts are detected in the surface model. As
nomena. Second, matrix D is nearly ill-conditioned or close to singular.
shown in Table 4, with low-order polynomials, there exist large re-
It is easy to imagine that the ground is the dominant section of those
siduals between the observation and the fit. However, the time con-
small patches located around the boundary of the stockpile. The height
sumption is much less than high-order polynomials. For example,
measurements of the ground section obtained from the laser are very
the fitting time is only 6.51 s for a sixth order polynomial surface
close to each other (without measurement noise, they are supposed to
but it jumps to 54.24 s for a 10th order polynomial surface. These re-
be equal with each other). Furthermore, due to the sensor noise, the
sults also indicate that the computational time for surface models is
height measurements of the stockpile section in those patches are also
longer than that for wireframe models. For example, with the 1st
close to the ground measurements. As a result, the elements in matrix
layer, the modelling time is 0.0558 s × 132 = 7.36 s (average
D may be ill-conditioned or close to singular. Based on the data collected
time × number of scans) using the 8th Fourier series. It is 21.52 s
in the lab, if the ground section is more than 90% in a patch, over-fitting
using the 8th polynomials. According to results shown in Table 4,
problem is expected. However, good fits can be obtained for those over-
the higher the degree of the polynomial, the better it can fit the
fitted patches by reducing the order of the polynomial functions.
stockpile surface. However, no obvious improvement in the SSE is
Table 6 compares average volumes calculated through different sur-
obtained if the degree is increased from the 8th to the 10th. On the
face models. The error in percentage is compared against volumes ob-
other hand, the use of high-order polynomial functions may cause
tained from original laser measurements, which are listed in Table 3.
Runge's phenomena, which in turn introduce more errors in fitting.
Again, these results clearly prove that the grid partitioning method im-
As is the case of wireframe model, large residuals mainly occur
proves the modelling accuracy and the speed. A low-order function can
around the top section of the stockpile and the lower edges of the
approximate the stockpile as well as a high-order function can. Volumes
stockpile.
calculated through surface models are reasonably good unless over-
Table 5 shows the SSE and time consumption for the 18th reclaiming
fitting event happens. For example, when the stockpile is segmented
dataset obtained using the grid partitioning method and Fig. 16 plots
into 10 × 10 patches and fitted by 10th polynomial function, the error
some of these models for comparison purposes. Based on these results,
is 1.27%. This is caused by the over-fitted patches: the (5, 6) and the
it can be verified that the grid partitioning method increases the fitting
(5, 7) patches, which are illustrated in Fig. 17. However, no over-
accuracy and lowers the computation time. However, one over-fitting
fitting happens at these two patches if the degree of the polynomial
event is detected when the stockpile is partitioned into an 8 × 8 patches
function is reduced to nine.
and modelled through the 8th polynomial function. This raises the SSE
to 1.384 × 104 mm2. After testing all the datasets collected in the exper- • Weighted surface fitting
iment, the authors would suggest that the minimum size of each patch
should be larger than 82 mm in width and 142 mm in length (9 × 9 The 20th reclaim data is selected to present the weighted fitting in
patches). Otherwise, over-fitting may occur at those patches which the section. Due to the scale, the stockpile can be scanned by laser

Fig. 21. The 10th-surface model generated with 30 × 30 patches and the residual.
76 S. Zhao et al. / International Journal of Mineral Processing 125 (2013) 61–77
Table 7
Volume of simulated stockpile (unit: volume 105 × m3, error %).
Model Volume Error%
Ideal 2.303964 N/A
Measurement 2.015819 0 N/A
Fourier (N = 6) 2.014928 −0.0442
Fourier (N = 8) 2.015089 −0.0362
Surface (16 × 16,N = 8) 2.014157 −0.0824
without any difficulties. Therefore, to test the performance of weighted
regression, some points belonging to the cutting surface of the stockpile
is randomly removed from the data set. The original cutting surface con-
tains 6171 scanning points and 288 points are removed from the set.
This surface is partitioned into 4 × 3 patches and each patch is fitted
through a 6th polynomial function. The fit of the model using unweight-
ed and weighted least squares regression produces the residuals is
shown in Fig. 18. This plot indicates that use of estimated weighted
function has reduced the oscillatory and improved the fitting. Weighted
surface model based on the BWR kinematics are able to assist the
modelling if laser measurements are not reliable or insufficient.
4.3.3. Full scale simulation
To examine the applicability of the proposed modelling algorithm,
an ideal stockpile model is generated by assuming that profiles of a
stockpile along the z axis are all hyperbolic curves. The length of this
model is 220 m, the maximum height is 30 m and the repose angle is
35°. The LMS200 is assumed to be located 45 m above the ground to
scan the stockpile with 1° angular resolution. White Gaussian noise is
added to each single scan to simulate the uneven stockpile surface and
the noisy laser measurement. The ideal model and laser measurement
model after filtering are illustrated in Fig. 19. The 8th-Fourier model
and the 10th surface model generated through 30 × 30 patches is
shown in Figs. 20 and 21. No obvious increment in the computational
time for this full scaled model was observed. With the Fourier model,
no over-fitting occurs. With the surface model, an over-fitting was de-
tected at the (20, 16) patch. However, if the order of the polynomial
function is reduced to nine, it will generate a good fit. Therefore, the
(20, 16) patch of the surface model shown in Fig. 21 is fitted by the
9th polynomial function and other patches are fitted by 10th polynomi-
al functions. Table 7 lists the volumes calculated using the Fourier and
surface models together with the total number of over-fitting that is ob-
served during the modelling. Similar to the scale-down model, over
fitting is still detected around the boundaries of the stockpile. However,
the risk of over-fitting is reduced. With the simulation data, all over-
fitted patches can be fitted quite well if the order of the polynomial
function is decreased by one.
4.3.4. Discussion
According to the results presented in previous sections, it can be
concluded that the wireframe model is more precise to represent the
geometric shape of stockpiles and leads to a high degree of accuracy in
the volume calculation. The minimum volume error in percentage is
0.0009% (3rd layer, 6th Fourier). With the surface model, the minimum
volume error in percentage is 0.00664% (3rd layer, 9 × 9 patches and
10th polynomials), which is 7.3 times more than the Fourier model.
Other than the above-listed results, all data obtained from the experi-
ment were tested using 4th–8th Fourier series for wireframe modelling.
A table, whose columns are 6th, 7th, 8th 9th and 10th polynomial func-
tions and rows are 6× 6, 7× 7, 8× 8 and 9× 9 patches was applied to test
the surface modelling. Results across all these data sets indicated that
the 6th order Fourier model and 8th order surface model obtained
from 9 × 9 patches performed best in wireframe model and surface
model accordingly.
Over-fitting Model Volume Error% Over-fitting
N/A Surface (24 × 24,N = 10) 2.014647 −0.0581 1
Surface (30 × 30,N = 8) 2.014599 −0.0605 1
0 Surface (30 × 30,N = 10) 2.014648 −0.0581 1
0 Surface (50 × 50,N = 10) 2.014799 −0.0506 0
0 Surface (50 × 50,N = 12) 2.014802 −0.0504 1
Over-fitting causes rapid oscillations on the model and damages the
modelling accuracy. However, all over-fitting problems observed in this
paper can be avoided by reducing the order of the fitting functions.
Therefore, for real applications, it is expected to re-fit the over-fitted
curve or the surface patch using a lower order function other than de-
veloping a method to solve the ill-conditioned or nearly singular matrix.
That means, a model may contain a group of Fourier or polynomial func-
tions with diffident orders. According to experiment results, the 8th
Fourier series and 10th polynomial functions are recommended for
modelling. However, users are still flexible to choose the order of the
fitting function regarding to their own accuracy and speed requirements.
Results obtained from experiment proved that the proposed model-
ling algorithms are able to model a real stockpile in real-time. The
laboratory-scale model created in the paper is a good representation
of a real stockpile. It copies the real blending operations and the model-
ling situation shares a number of similarities with the reality. For exam-
ple, the speed of the longitudinal motion and the material flow are not
constant. For another example, particles (ores) fall from different height
due to the swing the arm (boom) during the stacking and scoped parti-
cles (ores) might fall onto the stockpile during the reclaiming due to the
motion of the arm (boom). Furthermore, a full scaled stockpile is simu-
lated and both wireframe and surface model were successfully created
through the simulation data. The volumetric accuracy is generally better
than that of the laboratory-scale model. According to these results, the
authors believe that the proposed modelling algorithms are applicable
to process real-world data.
5. Conclusion and future work
This paper describes two stockpile modelling algorithms for day-to-
day material handling operations. Both these methods aim to build dy-
namic models of the stockpile during the blending and record historical
data in mathematical formats for further applications. Using image pro-
cessing techniques, stockpile boundaries can be easily detected. Fourier
models and surface models are able to obtained using nonlinear and lin-
ear regression methods. Additionally, a linear conversion method was
also proposed to improve the nonlinear least square fitting in universal
Fourier model at the stacking phase. This searching method is able to
find the globe minimum during the regression. For surface modelling,
the grid partition method is presented to approximate the stockpile
surface using simple models. Weighted regression is considered for
reclaiming operations and is achieved by simulating the laser measure-
ment using BWR kinematic equations. Both modelling algorithms have
proven to be successful on a laboratory model and a full-scale model.
The computation time is reasonable for a real-time application using
current personal computers. Based on these results, the authors believe
that they are applicable to real world stockpiles, which share similar
geometric shapes. By making available the geometric shape of the stock-
pile and relationships between layers, it is possible to calculate the vol-
ume of the stockpile and estimate the quality grade of the stockpile
when the accurate quality information is available. It is also then possi-
ble to develop an adaptive reclaiming pattern to replace current reaction
reclaiming methods. This will improve quality control in stockpiled
products and benefit iron-ore handling operations significantly.
 S. Zhao et al. / International Journal of Mineral Processing 125 (2013) 61–77
Due to the fact that regression is calculated by numerical algorithms,
over-fitting occurs in some cases. Rather than improve numerical algo-
rithms themselves to solve the over-fitting, the authors will develop an
evaluating strategy to automatically detect the over-fitting. For instance,
to use the normal vector as a penalty term, if the curve/surface normal
changes significantly, the fit is considered to be an over fit and system
will automatically lower the order of the function until a good fit is
obtained.
Before modelling algorithms are applied to real industry applica-
tions, they need to be tested by real world data. A filed trip is expected
to evaluate the modelling performance and improve the modelling sys-
tem. Instead of using the 3 DOF scanning system described in this paper,
a BWR will be converted into a mobile scanning device by mounting dif-
ferent sensory systems. To obtain accurate position information for
scanning, one possible solution is to integrate GPS and encoder mea-
surements using the Unscented Kalman Filter (UKF). The simulation
work conducted by the authors have proven that the average position-
ing accuracy at the end of the boom is better than 15 cm during simula-
tions (Zhao et al., 2012a). Knowing the position of the boom end (where
the laser scanner is supposed to be mounted in), it is also possible to in-
corporate this information to the laser measurement data and compen-
sate the potential distortion caused by the high travelling speed of the
BWR. Additionally, the LMS200 will be replaced by an outdoor laser
scanner, which is capable to operate in harsh and dusty environments,
for instance, the Sick PLS scanner. As mentioned by Scheding et al., it
can provide extremely good results for mapping the profile of an under-
ground mining tunnel. (Scheding et al., 1997). To handle the real oper-
ating environment, a number of improvements might to be made for
the pre-processing stage with the consideration of the laser perfor-
mance. These improvements may include: the noise filter and the
boundary detector. However, they need to be further validated based
on the data collected from the field trip.
Acknowledgement
The authors would like to thank the Australian Research Council and
Industry Partner, Matrix Group Pty Ltd. for their financial and in-kind
support received through ARC Linkage LP0989780 grant.
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