Профессионально-коммуникативная подготовка студентов
.pdfII. Robotics development and industrial applications.
Coiffet (1983) mentions that robotics developed as a result of the desire to create a device that can replace man in everything he cannot do or does not wish to do himself, but still needs or wants to do, without presenting any threat to his authority.
It has been emphasized in many publications and by afferent robot manufacturers that if the long run robots can do certain mining jobs faster than human operators, they are more consistent and more reliable than humans, and that they can work in hazardous environments. Moreover, they cost less than employing human workers for repetitive jobs – obviously there are tasks which only humans can solve. As pointed out by Strong (1980), unfortunately this requires a lot of training and hard work.
The environment in which a robot is placed and where it operates defines the surroundings for a fixed or variable position. In the environment, the robot encounters obstacles that are to be avoided and objects of interest upon which it must act. Thus, interaction is established between the robot and the environment.
Real robots possess, in varying degrees, two characteristic properties: versatility and adaptability to their environment.
1.Versatility: the structural/mechanical potential for performing varied tasks and/or performing the same task in different ways. All existing robots possess, to varying extent, this quality.
2.Adaptability: file ability to perform a task in a changing environment. Some of the roles for industrial robots described in this paper require that the robot be aware of the mining environment. Robot sensors developed so far are adequate for interpreting the environment in manufacturing industries, but considerable research and development work is required before they can be applied in mining.
The mining environment is very different from the environment in a factory, in which Industrial robots currently function. Two characteristics of mining environments which Impose demands on the designer are dust and the confined space in the mine headings where work is canted out: For this reason, it is necessary for the robots used in a mining environment to have more adaptability and “intelligence” than robots in other scenarios.
A typical mining robot, therefore, consists of a robot structure with a computer (AI or knowledge-based system) built into it. In
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practice such mining robots can be used if the tasks to be performed are initially repetitive. When automatic environmental analysis is fully developed, a reliable robot that can read to its environment is possible. Mining robots equipped with limited performance visual systems or stress and strain measurement systems at affordable cost are now being developed. These robots will be able to sense changes in their environments, and compensate for these changes in their performance of tasks.
III. Mining applications.
Work has recently started in Canada to evaluate and identify potential areas of application of AI and robotics in serving the industry needs. Research is focused on Canadian hart rock mining machinery manufacturing and services provided.
Robots can be employed either autonomously or in a teleoperation system, which involves a human directing the robot by remote control.
Autonomous robots in a hostile environment could perform preprogrammed tasks, such as face monitoring, ground control and support, haulage control, and environmental control. At presort, autonomous robots are employed to do only simple tasks, for they do not have AI built in to allow them to think and independently interpret their environment. Therefore, in current practice, teleoperation systems are used most often in exploration work.
It is important to remember that robotics assembly, or other system design processes for the mining industry, must start with the analysis and very often with the redesign of the pans to be assembled. Design for mining and for processing is of crucial importance. In this area CAD/CAM systems need to work with AT (expert systems) and should become increasingly intelligent. The beet solution would be to take into account.
IV. Russia.
Computerization in modem conditions must be regarded as one of the basic elements for increasing the technological level of the coal production, as well as one of the main instruments for improving the management systems of coal-mining enterprises and companies.
Unfortunately, computerization level in the Russian coal enterprises obviously lags behind the computerization level, reached by best foreign coal companies.
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The importance of fundamental and applied sciences can not be overestimated, in particular that of sector linked with creating and applying mathematical methods and computer technologies for mining. In what ways has the Russian coal industry to change by the beginning of the XXI century? There are going to be nearly 90 mines (in 1993 – 246) and 58 open pits (in 1993 – 63), providing a profitable output of 300 million tons, including by open-cut mining method.
But these enterprises should be highly-efficient in comparison with today’s, having substantially reduced production costs and increased miners labour productivity. Hence, there is a necessity of a qualitative breakthrough in the main parameters of coal-mining enterprises.
We are already building, for example, mines and open pits on Erunakovskoye deposit in Kuzbass, which as a result of their technological decisions are highly competitive with their best foreign analogues. Aiming at most promising enterprises, the programs of technical re-equipment and technological reorganization of the mining process are being intensively worked out.
But unfortunately for enterprises under construction and reconstruction, level of studying the problems of using modern computer technologies is obviously insufficient. If the current situation doesn’t change, according to the principle of “a weak link in the chain”, plans for reaching the desired level of technical-economic indices would be called into question.
The results of real projects assessment show that solutions, concerning the automation of the enterprise management, fall in some cases no less than 10 years behind – both in the choice of computers, in the architecture of the system and in the area of basic programming tools.
What should computer systems at mines and open pits look like? What role should computer technology play in the life of a com-
plicated organism, such as a coalmining company?
First of all, they should be integrated systems, covering every side of an enterprise’s (or company’s) activities and removing unnatural (unfortunately – ingrained at Russian coal enterprises) artificial division between automatic control of technological processes and the computerization of non-technological management. These systems also must provide coordinated collective work of managers and spe-
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cialists of different services of an enterprise in a common information space with corresponding limitation to the right of information access and correction.
From the functional point of view the computer technologies must provide the possibility to solve effectively the following complex tasks.
1)Complex state control and management of main and additional technological systems and sites.
2)The safety of mining control.
3)Replenishment and correction of components of an enterprise’s model (geological, topological and technological, taking into consideration data from geological sketches, additional information from the mine workings, the mine-surveying data, information about changing the structure and location of technological equipment, etc.).
4)Efficient production management (the basic and auxiliary production, including the calendar planning, warehouse calculations, time-board calculations).
5)The production development management (multi-variant complex assessment of different scenarios in the development of mining, technical re-equipment, etc.).
6)Technological preparation of production (including publica-
tion of necessary mine-graphic documentation: layer plans, geological estimates, registration certificates of mine workings, schemes of ventilation, transport, power supply, etc. with carrying out all the necessary calculations).
7)Analysis of production activities (based on the detailed elemental calculation of all the components of production expenses for coal output).
8)Marketing management.
9)The production sales management.
10)Account calculation.
11)The financial flows management (planning and analysis).
12)The material-and-technical supply management.
13)Personnel management.
14)Automation of the document circulation.
15)Forming and transmission of statistical, branch and corporate
accounts.
16)Mine-ecological monitoring.
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17) Telecommunication services with the expansion to the external data transmission nets.
Integrated management systems for coalmining enterprises (and companies) must be based on modem computing platforms, and make the most use of the abilities of long-term net operating systems and high capacity database management systems.
The variety of system functions determines the necessary variety and non-triviality of methods being appropriate to use in its application modules (elements of expert systems, logical-simulation modeling, three-dimensional computer graphics, animation, etc.).
These functionally complete integrated systems do not yet exist anywhere in the world, but as the analysis of state and tendencies in the mining software implies, their appearance in industriallydeveloped countries can be expected in the next 5 years.
Above the problems at the “enterprise” and “company” level were mentioned only. However, there are also some urgent problems on a larger scale that can not be solved without using modern computer technologies:
1.Geological-economic estimation of the raw-material base for providing reliable reproduction of high-quality resources being intensively worked out.
Taking into consideration the new principles of estimation of coal basins and detailed prediction of the location of high-quality resources (first of all in eastern regions) we need in the nearest future the sufficient multipurpose computer technologies (for example, based on the powerful three-dimensional GIS – geoinformation system, providing the effective use and interpretation of the space surveying information with the help of geophysical methods and traditional methods of geological prospecting of coal deposits).
2.Ecological estimation of coal-mining regions.
Very tense environmental situation in most of the regions (atmospheric pollution, harmful influence of mining, breaches of the earth surface, the spill of effluent and formation of wastes) is getting more complicated in connection with closing most unprofitable and non-promising mines (since 1993 57 such mines have been closed, another 20 will be closed in 1997–1998, and yet another 60 mines – in 1999–2000). The unprofitable mines are being liquidated in nearly all basins of the country – and, accordingly, in all the basins there is the
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problem of estimating the additional factors which have negative influence on the environment excretion in the atmosphere and surface layers of residual methane, the transfer of detrimental admixtures in the process of spoil bank and waste bank erosion, deformation of the surface, hydro geological consequences of the workings flooding, etc.
The problem of carrying out environmental-economic examinations of the technical-economic substantiation for closing mines is pressing.
To solve the above mentioned tasks, the creation of a large-scale and multi-level system of mining-environmental monitoring is needed. Such a system could be implemented in the environment of quickly developing telecommunication infrastructure in Russia, and based on the powerful GIS, including special additional components that provide: automated information collection and processing, using the remote sounding, permanent and slide monitoring, modeling the erosion process and transfer of detrimental admixtures (sometimes – transbordering): estimating the future environmental situation according to given scenario of technical development of controlled territories.
In what way will modern integrated computer systems appear in Russian mines and open pits? Which path should we take?
The first (and rather obvious) promising direction is localization and implementation of the best foreign software, supplied by the leading firms from the USA, Australia and Germany, at the Russian coalmining enterprises. As current experience implies, it is quite a reasonable way for some of the most sustainable and effective coal mining enterprises, having such features as: orientation towards obviously the best in the world level, foundation of so called “points of growth”, that serve stimulating and orienting patterns of the computerization for other enterprises.
But there are also some negative aspects of such an approach: in such a case the most of the Russian coalmining enterprises would be out of the major computerization process – because of limited financial resources, the potential of Russian scientists, programmers and computer engineers would remain practically unclaimed.
It should be mentioned that despite a definite lag in deployment of proper software industry in Russia, the level of Russian scientists’ developments, for example, in the field of mathematical modeling of technological processes at coal-mining enterprises, and in the field of
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computer methods of solving geomechanical problems, looks quite appropriate and up-to-date. That is why the possibility of different forms of international integration of efforts in mining software development can not be dismissed.
An example of this kind is a promising computer system named “TIGR” (Three-Dimensional Engineer-Geological Editor), being currently developed in the department of geoinformation systems and technologies of the joint-stock company “Rosinformugol” with the help of “Rosugol” company. It is based on the CAD-system “Bentley Microstation-95” (USA). The latter has undoubtedly proved to be a good system, using relatively cheap graphic stations based on PC, which are quite available for domestic enterprises.
The achievements of “young” and independent domestic software firms (“Galactic”, “Parus”), working in the field of complex systems development for automation of production activities on a scale of the whole corporation, including the industrial sphere, do also inspire definite optimism.
These systems are up-to-date designed flexible systems, have open architecture that are able to work together with practically all prospective DBMS (ORACLE, INFORMIX, SyBASE), and are not far from reaching the level of their foreign analogues.
There is another real problem, typical not only for Russian, but for foreign enterprises as well. It is caused by a lack of special and psychological preparation, the existing opposition of the personnel and even the whole services to application of the new computer technologies, the unwillingness of geologists, mine-surveyors, mining engineers and managers to depart from usual “paper” technologies.
We are pinning our hopes on the success of computerization of coal enterprises with one of the key elements in improving the system of mining higher education – the maximum possible implementation of computer technologies in the process of preparation of a modem mining engineer. We are sure, that the engineer, who had significant experience in modem computer mining technologies at the technical University, would introduce advanced ideas and production methods at his coal enterprise.
In this connection we appreciate any kind of collaboration with foreign universities and firms, aimed at the development of computerization in the Russian mining higher educational institutions. In par-
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ticular, the practice of allotments to higher educational institutions (for some “symbolic” payment) of so called “academic licenses” in the field of modem mining software should be considered quite promising.
According to this scheme, for example, with the help of “Rosugol” company, the above mentioned CAD-system “Bentley Micro- station-95” and PC-version of modem GIS ARC/INFO (ESRY, the USA) have appeared in Russian mining universities. By the way, we hope that the “academic licensing”, would be more widely practiced by Russian software companies as well.
As for “Rosugol” company, despite the complicated economic realities, it has always aimed and will continue to aim at using all the possible resources and methods, to help the implementation of modern computer technologies in coal industry – by means of “personal example” (currently – by using for the first time in our industry the powerful INFORMIX on-line server, the up-to-date computer net development – the INTRANET technology, creating and introducing the universal automated system for receiving and processing the bookkeeping information from enterprises in the field), of initiating pilot projects with western firms (as it was with DEC, MINCOM, SGI firms), of using the investment mechanisms (particularly, the “UgolTelecom” and “Rosinformugol” companies are currently working in the field of development of the branch integrated telecommunication net) and of supporting the corresponding directions of scientific research.
II. Express your opinion on further application of artificial intelligent in Russian mines.
III. Present your abstracts of the information from the texts given above.
UNIT XIV
COMPUTERIZATION OF COAL INDUSTRY
I. Read and translate the following texts. Prepare short reports based on them and additional material you find for the conference “Computerization of Coal Industry”.
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THE CONCEPT OF AN ACTIVE AND SEAMLESS (NATION-WIDE) GEODETIC CONTROL NETWORK BY GPS, RADIO AND TELEMETRY
I. Abstract.
In present most of the National Geodetic Networks are passive and built up of discrete 1 points in sense of continues and consistent measurement availability. With differential GPS techniques it is possible to establish a control network service that can provide the opportunity for the different users to pinpoint their position at higher accuracy and consistency regardless of the measurement conditions in real time.
This paper describes the idea of how to improve on the positioning accuracy of the existing Real Time Differential GPS services to achieve the necessary precision for geodetic and surveying application, to eliminate the errors occur from the projection and scale differences between coordinate systems, and how to make measurements independent from transformation between the WGS-84 and local networks.
II. Introduction.
Since many of the countries in Europe and other places over the world have introduced different services for higher accuracy positioning with GPS (DCI, RASANT, OmniStar), there is still need to improve them. The precision of these services are ranging from 20 to 1 meter and this is satisfactory for many of the applications, mainly for navigation, agricultural, avionics and fleet management purposes. However, the National Geodetic Networks have the dm-cm accuracy and such as provide the framework for geodesy and surveying. Furthermore, using these services it is possible to establish an active and seamless control network and service that can provide more precise positioning and so a sort of an electrical co-ordinate system can be fond. Active, because it can re-evaluate the actual parameters for the measurements taken at a given time and seamless as the accuracy will remain at a certain level all over the area of the service.
Wide Area Differential GPS services are used extensively and frequently among the users and one of the best is the subcarrier broadcast service. Historically, the autonomous differential measurements improved on the accuracy then the LDGPS technology took the ad-
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vantage of the correlation of errors. The Wide Area DGPS services, such as Oceonics, Fugro, Racal, for surveying and WAAGPS for avionics use different part of the GPS measurements for similar purposes. They are the measurement domain and the position domain and they are not requiring dual frequency receivers that result limited overall accuracy.
The technique serves several industries and services, mentioning surveying, aviation, marine services, and other military and civilian applications.
Another powerful application of this technology is DCI’s algorithm both for separate and network broadcast system to deliver the correction data. The first is consists of stand-alone GPS reference stations output RTCM messages and uses FM subcarrier for the broadcast, the other uses a network of base stations to collect the messages received by a network hub that processes them and transmit back to the broadcast stations that can behave like virtual reference stations (EAGLE, Extended Area GPS Location Enhancement System).
This paper describes an idea of improvement on EAGLE to produce more accurate and, appropriate corrections to be broadcast.
III. System idea.
The basic idea is to establish a network of reference stations which from a transformation; algorithm can be produced for their internal area. This is the so-called PGA (Permanent GPS Array) and these stations send the collected data in to a centre to calculate the necessary corrections for different territories. As the main source of errors in the GPS measurements is the atmosphere it is, necessary to collect or estimate data about the whether conditions or at least the changes of its parameters. For real time measurements the data latency is one of main problem that has, to be kept at the minimum level and therefore, in case the model is established or estimated before the actual change takes place, the precision can be raised.
In comparison, the DCI technology, EAGLE uses the meteorological data for the model of corrections collected from the reference sites such as humidity, temperature, pressure, and making virtual reference stations for the better accuracy. If the tropospheric conditions change the examination of RTCM messages results different correction coefficients within the area. Therefore whilst the first can work with the actual data for modeling the letter can provide
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