Amphibian subterranean robot for mine exploration

Although many experimental and applied robotic research have been carried out to cater the need of planetary explorer to deep sea systems, yet the application of subterranean robotics in underground mine is very rare. Particularly robot with intervention capability after post flooding situation of underground mines has not been reported earlier. Design and development of an amphibian exploring robot capable of operation in constrained mine environment puts a tremendous challenge from both scientific and engineering perspective. The amphibian Subterranean Robotic explorer (SR) is capable of moving over fairly rough terrain, crawl over basin floor as well as can swim effortlessly. This paper presents the development aspects of an amphibian exploring robot. Several field trials have been carried out for performance testing of the system to ascertain its capability on dry land as well as under water.

[1]  M. Yousef Ibrahim,et al.  Robotization of coal harvesting in open cut lignite mines , 1997 .

[2]  Rolf Dieter Schraft,et al.  First steps towards an autonomous mining robot for coal extraction , 1990, EEE International Workshop on Intelligent Robots and Systems, Towards a New Frontier of Applications.

[3]  David M. Bradley,et al.  Scan matching for flooded subterranean voids , 2004, IEEE Conference on Robotics, Automation and Mechatronics, 2004..

[4]  David Silver,et al.  Towards Topological Exploration of Abandoned Mines , 2005, Proceedings of the 2005 IEEE International Conference on Robotics and Automation.

[5]  Wolfram Burgard,et al.  A system for volumetric robotic mapping of abandoned mines , 2003, 2003 IEEE International Conference on Robotics and Automation (Cat. No.03CH37422).

[6]  Anthony Stentz,et al.  A robotic system for underground coal mining , 1992, Proceedings 1992 IEEE International Conference on Robotics and Automation.

[7]  Peter I. Corke,et al.  Automation of an underground mining vehicle using reactive navigation and opportunistic localization , 2003, Proceedings 2003 IEEE/RSJ International Conference on Intelligent Robots and Systems (IROS 2003) (Cat. No.03CH37453).

[8]  Sebastian Thrun,et al.  A campaign in autonomous mine mapping , 2004, IEEE International Conference on Robotics and Automation, 2004. Proceedings. ICRA '04. 2004.

[9]  Wolfram Burgard,et al.  An Autonomous Robotic System for Mapping Abandoned Mines , 2003, NIPS.

[10]  D. W. Hainsworth,et al.  The Numbat: A Remotely Controlled Mine Emergency Response Vehicle , 1998 .

[11]  D. Pugal,et al.  CFD simulations and real world measurements of drag of biologically inspired underwater robot , 2008, 2008 IEEE/OES US/EU-Baltic International Symposium.