Opportunities and Challenges for Autonomous Shuttle Car Operation in Underground Coal Mines

Operators of underground coal mine shuttle cars are exposed to numerous hazards including noise, dust and musculoskeletal trauma. The repetitive nature of shuttle car operation leads to fatigue-related incidents and soft tissue injuries. The poor visibility conditions, and dust and noise increase the occupational hazards to the operator, as well to other miners. To reduce the risks for all miners, towards providing a safer working environment for all workers, the introduction of autonomous shuttle cars is essential. This paper introduces a project to demonstrate the feasibility of incorporating autonomous shuttle cars in the underground coal mining cycle. The autonomous shuttle car will be able to localize itself, to map its surroundings and to navigate in an underground GPS-denied environment. It will also navigate efficiently by fusing different on-board sensor modalities, autonomously planning the optimum path and traversing around the mine while avoiding collisions with humans and other static and dynamic obstacles. This will be achieved by exploring and testing different state-of-the-art techniques and off-the-shelf components, and integrating them into existing equipment, i.e., retrofitting an actual shuttle car. Moreover, a modified mining system will be demonstrated which will incorporate the autonomous shuttle car, capable of making real-time decisions, into the mining cycle. The system will regulate the interactions between the autonomous machinery and the human dynamic, with emphasis given to the safety of the workers, and enable the real-time, remote supervision of the mining process. The focus will be on coal mines, where the room and pillar mining method is used. INTRODUCTION The growing demand for mineral supplies combined with the steady decline in the available surface reserves has driven the mining industry to mine deeper underground deposits. These deposits are difficult to access, and the environment may be hazardous to mine personnel (e.g., increased heat, difficult ventilation conditions, etc.). Moreover, current mining methods expose the miners to numerous occupational hazards such as working in the proximity of heavy mining equipment, possible roof falls, as well as noise and dust. In recent decades, the utilization of autonomous machines has evolved in the mining industry to provide increased health and safety to mine personnel and reduce their exposure to adverse conditions. Automation aims to remove the workers from the hazardous conditions which may be present in an active mining area and place them to a more comfortable and safer environment at a distance from the active mining face. Examples of incorporation of autonomous machinery in the mining industry include the fleet of more than 100 autonomous mine trucks that are employed at the Rio Tinto’s iron ore mines in Western Australia for material haulage. There are also semi-autonomous, teleoperated LHD machines employed at several mines around the world (e.g., Sweden, USA, China). However, the operation of the autonomous machinery in these cases is either partial (semi-autonomous, teleoperated vehicles) and of small-scale or occurs at surface mines where GPS significantly facilitates the autonomous navigation of them.