Longwall Remote Operations - Face Mapping Robot

Underground mining companies have taken significant steps to improve the remote operability and monitoring of their Longwall mines with several installing dedicated longwall control rooms on the surface for remote monitoring and managing operational tasks that traditionally occurred on-face, particularly in relation to management of the shearer.

Transitioning from on-face to off-face longwall operations presents a range of challenges. As the on-face operators move away from the active cutting area, they lose sight of the physical equipment and key operational data points such as the mining horizon and the integrity of mechanical components.

The use of inertial navigation systems, 3D laser scanning and visual cameras have assisted in improving how well a longwall can be remotely monitored. Although these technologies are currently available and in use as production level systems, there are many significant deployment and execution issues relating to:

• The number of devices required to cover the width and articulation of a longwall face;
• The impact on communications and electrical infrastructure design;
• The cost of the sensors; and
• The maintenance workload associated with the sensors.

It is proposed that a substantial improvement could be made by designing and executing a mobile face scanning system (the “Face Mapping Robot”). The robot would contain inertial navigation hardware, forward (coal face), rear-facing (goaf), and traverse (walkway) cameras and laser scanners. The robot would be mounted onto the rear of the AFC pans and be able to move along the face independently of the shearer.

The primary objectives of the robot are to:

• Enable face-wide visual images of the coal face and roof supports;
• Enable face-wide 3D laser scans of the coal face and roof supports; and to
• Enable a fast remap of the position of the AFC panline at any time, particularly at a point in time after the AFC push has occurred.

This report documents the outcomes to design, build, and perform on-face tests with a manually-propelled prototype robot to determine if the data captured is suitable for the various automation systems currently in use. Equipped with inertial navigation hardware, cameras and laser scanners, the robot was mounted on the rear of the AFC pans and manually traversed along the panline. The trial successfully captured the intended data on the coal face and roof supports.