CSIR Centre for Mining Innovation and the Mine Safety Platform Robot

The Council for Scientific and Industrial Research (CSIR) in South Africa is currently developing a robot for the inspection of the ceiling (hanging wall) in an underground gold mine. The robot autonomously navigates the 30 meter long by 3 meter wide, by 1 meter high stope area, while scanning the hanging wall to generate a thermally textured 3-D map. This 3-D model is then analyzed to identify cooler regions that are not consistent with the hanging wall topography. Cool ventilation air cools the hot rock deep below surface. If a crack exists in the rock, then the heat flow is interrupted and the 'unstable' cracked area is preferentially cooled by a fraction of a degree. This area is identified as potentially unsafe and flagged for attention by the miners upon their re-entry to the mine. The project is a collaborative effort between three units within the CSIR. The Centre for Mining Innovation (CMI) is the project lead unit and is developing the sensors needed for underground data acquisition for the safety application. A 3-D structured light scanner is rigidly mounted with a FLIR long wave infra-red camera and rotated through 360 degrees, creating a model of the stope. The CMI is also developing a telescopic arm with a 'tapper' to mimic the current inspection process and verify the algorithmically determined unstable region. The body of the robot is being developed by the Mechatronics and Micro-Manufacturing (MMM) group. The tracked main body is assisted by tracked flippers. Sensors for navigation are mounted in the front section while the safety data sensors are mounted atop the robot. A telescopic robot arm completes the package. The software component is being developed by the Mobile Intelligent Autonomous Systems (MIAS) Group. It includes the scanning of the environment with a laser scanner to determine a drive-ability region which is used in constraining the path planning and exploration algorithms. Combined these systems form the Underground Autonomous Mine Safety Platform for the autonomous inspection of a stope hanging wall.(1)