MVS chief executive Scott Thayer said the groups are committed to building and delivering mobile mapping solutions for customers to "allow them to derive significant value from their routine operational use", including environments where global positioning systems (GPS) cannot be used.

"We will be able to combine the solutions and capabilities … to further enhance the value that we can deliver to our customers by offering a much broader range of product and services option," he added.

Peck Tech CEO Jonathan Peck said the companies are already aligned in many areas; this includes a common future vision regarding LiDAR and optical based 3-D mobile mapping solutions.

"The broad suite of advanced solutions that will result will deliver significant productivity and safety benefits and choices to both our underground and open-pit mining customers," he said.

MVS is an industry-funded spin-off of the Carnegie Mellon University's National Robotics Engineering Center in Pennsylvania, US. Its operations deliver mobile mapping hardware, software and services for integrated geometric and visual analyses from a range of vertical, sub-vertical and horizontal developments, including ventilation shafts, conveyance shafts, ore-passes, ramps, production drifts and stopes.

Peck Tech Consulting provides advanced sensing, monitoring, control and automation consulting services and products, including the uGPS RapidMapper solution for 3-D mobile localisation and mapping for underground operations.

The companies have not confirmed an effective date for the partnership.