Capturing Motion,
Crafting Stories

Coal mine production environment is bad, and safety accidents often occur. Intelligent fully mechanized mining face is an inevitable trend of technology development. As the core technology of fully mechanized mining face, the automation level of cantilever roadheader is the key to improve the quality and efficiency.

In the working process of the cantilever roadheader, the traveling mechanism drives the crawler to push the fuselage forward, and the cutting mechanism changes the position of the cutting head through the hydraulic cylinder. Finally, the drilling operation of the cutting head is completed with the cooperation of the two. Therefore, in order to enable the machine tool to cut the roadway section automatically according to the requirements, it is necessary to solve the problems of the perception of the spatial pose of the roadheader body and the positioning of the cutting head.

Scholars at home and abroad have done in-depth research on the perception and positioning of roadheader's posture, and put forward the measurement methods of roadheader's body posture based on total station, gyroscope and ultra-wideband technology, but there are always some shortcomings, such as no real-time monitoring (total station), high accumulated error (gyroscope) and diffuse reflection of signals (ultra-wideband).

Different from these methods, the School of Mechanical and Electrical Engineering of China University of Mining and Technology adopts NOKOV passive optical motion capture system to measure the fuselage and robotic arm, and obtain high-precision pose data in real time. This method can directly solve the fuselage positioning problem, and the cutting head positioning can be determined by its relative position with the robotic arm. After getting the pose data, we can drive according to the predetermined path and realize the automatic cutting of roadway section. Although the motion capture equipment has not been used in the field environment, accurate pose data can verify the accuracy of sensors and automatic control algorithm of roadheader.

At present, the reliability, positioning accuracy and automation degree of roadheader positioning devices in China are low, and many teams are engaged in related research. NOKOV Technology is willing to provide more support for researchers.