Navigation and control of continuous mining systems for coal mining

One of the US Department of Energy, Pittsburgh Research Center (PRC) mine safety and health research programs is developing technology that will allow remote-controlled operation of mechanized equipment normally used in underground room-and-pillar coal mining, thereby permitting workers to be located away from the hazardous coal extraction area (the face). As part of this program, advanced machine navigation and control technologies are being developed for underground room-and-pillar and highwall coal mining that can be applied to commercially available mining equipment. These technologies use off-the-shelf components and a flexible control software architecture to minimize the effort required to adapt them to mining equipment. An accurate reliable navigation system that can provide the mining machine´s heading and location at all times is a critical requirement for a remote-controlled mining system. After much research involving several different types of navigation sensors, the Honeywell Ring Laser Gyro Inertial Navigation System was selected as showing the most promise. It has been installed on a continuous mining machine at PRCs surface test facility. This paper describes the system being employed on a mining machine while final accuracy and performance testing continues