Development of a remotely-controlled road header robot

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Tezin Türü: Yüksek Lisans

Tezin Yürütüldüğü Kurum: Orta Doğu Teknik Üniversitesi, Mühendislik Fakültesi, Maden Mühendisliği Bölümü, Türkiye

Tezin Onay Tarihi: 2014

Öğrenci: RAMİN ENTEZARİ

Danışman: NURAY DEMİREL

Özet:

A road header is a mechanized excavating equipment utilized widely in tunnel construction and underground mining. It is composed of a boom-mounted rotating cutting head, a loading device, a conveyor, and a crawler travelling track to move the entire machine forward and backward. The productivity and performance of the road header is directly affected by the operator efficiency. Besides that road headers are usually operated in deep excavations and hazardous underground mine environments. Therefore, development of a robot of this machine both eliminates any deficiency related to the operator and prevents loss of life in case of mine accidents. This study presents the design and development of a remotely-controlled road header robot. The research methodology involves 4 main stages: (i) development of 3-D solid model of the road header using photogrammetric techniques and CAD design programs, (ii) designing the 1/10-scaled physical prototype of the road header, (iii) integrating control mechanism into the developed physical prototypes, (iv) running the developed road header to validate the model. As a result of the study, 1/10scaled remotely controlled KSP-32 model road header robot of 1.31 m length and 25 cm height, and 45 kg weight was developed together with its control systems. The robot can be controlled in a circle area of 50 m diameter. This study is original towards achieving fully automated robotics of mining machines.