The demand of coal is increasing day-by-day with the growth of civilization. In spite of enhancement of coal production, a huge amount of foreign currency has to be spoiled to import coal from outside to meet the demand-supply gap. The existing coal reserve cannot be extracted fully due to unavailability of proper technology in Indian coal mines. Suitable remote operation technology can be introduced either for extraction of coal from deeper seams or monitoring the mine environment for safety.   A robotic system has been developed to remotely monitor the environment of a hazardous mine tunnel from the mine manager's desk before starting any extraction. The system is equipped with a set of navigational sensors (IR sensors, compass, laser range finder and camera) and operational sensors (CO, CO 2 , CH 4 , temperature and humidity sensor). The robot can be controlled either manually or autonomously based on the need. In both the cases, the data can be transferred to the over ground station for monitoring. The performance of the system has been demonstrated in laboratory successfully.
['Dip N. Ray', 'Somjyoti Majumder', 'Atanu Maity', 'B N Roy', 'Sankar Karmakar']
Design and development of a mobile robot for environment monitoring in underground coal mines