Design and Navigation Technique of an Underground Mine Inspection Robot

The state of most underground mine tunnels could be very capricious and precarious with possible sudden dangers including that of near collapse walls, exposition to toxic substances including dangerous gases. These dangers coupled with size restrictions of portions of such mines inspection by robots the preferred option as opposed to that done by humans.

Wilson, M.; Okraku-Yirenkyi, Y.

2019

English

The state of most underground mine tunnels could be very capricious and precarious with possible sudden dangers including that of near collapse walls, exposition to toxic substances including dangerous gases. These dangers coupled with size restrictions of portions of such mines inspection by robots the preferred option as opposed to that done by humans. This is even more critical for a country such as Ghana which has underground mining as one of main industrial activities and also a large percentage of the mining areas lying within seismic and tectonic zones (myjoyonline.com, 2018). This work addresses the engineering of an autonomous robot for performing site inspection of underground mines. An experimental robot (G-BOT) constructed from Lego EV3 educational kit is used for this project. The experimental robot used is equipped with two large active motors and three ultrasonic sensors. The classical industrial PID control feedback system together with fundamental control principles are employed to ensure smooth and autonomous navigation of the robot through acutely constrained curves of a tunnel. This paper discusses the design and programming of an autonomous navigation mechanism of a tunnel inspection robot. Key findings in this work include the establishment of the fact that a simple Journal of Engineering and Economic Development, 5(2), 1-10, July 2019 2 design of robot using 3 ultrasonic sensors with the associated programming can be deployed to effectively navigate the tunnel of an underground mine. And that the effectiveness of the navigation would allow the expansion of the robots capabilities to include the fixing of cameras and electronic sniffers to definitively make a determination of which portions of the tunnel may be presenting personnel and equipment with dangers that would have to be addressed ahead of a possible disaster.