Safety Inspections and Gas Monitoring in Hazardous Mining Areas Shortly
After Blasting Using Autonomous UAVs
Abstract
This article presents the first ever fully autonomous UAV (Unmanned
Aerial Vehicle) mission to perform gas measurements after a real blast
in an underground mine. The demonstration mission was deployed around 40
minutes after the blast took place, and as such realistic gas levels
were measured. We also present multiple field robotics experiments in
different mines detailing the development process. The presented novel
autonomy stack, denoted as the Routine Inspection Autonomy (RIA)
framework, combines a risk-aware 3D path planning D + ∗ , with 3D
LiDAR-based global relocalization on a known map, and it is integrated
on a custom hardware and a sensing stack with an onboard gas sensing
device. In the presented framework, the autonomous UAV can be deployed
in incredibly harsh conditions (dust, significant deformations of the
map) shortly after blasting to perform inspections of lingering gases
that present a significant safety risk to workers. We also present a
change detection framework that can extract and visualize the
areas that were changed in the blasting procedure, a critical parameter
for planning the extraction of materials, and for updating existing mine
maps. As will be demonstrated, the RIA stack can enable robust autonomy
in harsh conditions, and provides reliable and safe navigation behavior
for autonomous Routine Inspection missions.