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They are diesel powered trucks which navigate by following the wall profile - slightly confusingly they are often called 'trams' because moving muck underground
by edfvbrfgb 16y ago
They are diesel powered trucks which navigate by following the wall profile - slightly confusingly they are often called 'trams' because moving muck underground is called 'tramming' from the original medieval mine railways!
- georgecmu 16y agoSo that brings me to my original question -- what kind of sensing do you use on these trams, both to follow the walls and to detect obstacles?
- edfvbrfgb 16y agoTime of flight laser scanners (LIDAR). Scanners on each side of the truck measure the shape of the wall. you drive the truck down the tunnel once (in one system) it stores a map of the wall shape and then follows the same shape to keep the same distance form the walls. Another laser scanner checks the tunnel ahead (and behind) for obstacles, other trucks, people, rockfalls etc. On some systems a spinning laser on the top hits fixed prism reflectors with known position on the roof and walls, it constantly resects it's position from this.