A Cooperative Control Method for Fully Mechanized Mining Machines Based on Fuzzy Logic Theory and Neural Networks

In a fully mechanized mining face, the coordinated control of coal mining machines has a significant promoting effect to perfect the mining environment and improve the efficiency of coal production and has become a research focus all over the world. In this paper, a cooperative control method based on the integration of fuzzy logic theory and neural networks was proposed. The improved Elman neural network (ENN) through a threshold strategy was presented to predict the running parameters of coal mining machines. On the basis of coupling analysis of coal mining machines, the expert knowledge base of scraper conveyor was established based on fuzzy logic theory. Furthermore, the probabilistic neural network (PNN) was applied to evaluate the running status of scraper conveyor, and the cooperative control flow was designed and analyzed. Finally, a simulation example was provided and the comparison results illustrated that the proposed method was feasible and superior to the manual control.