Locomotion Emulator for Testing Mine Vehicle Navigation

摘要

The U.S. Bureau of Mines has been investigating methods and technology that mayimprove safety and production when applied to existing mining machines. Toward those goals, the Bureau has developed navigation systems that provide machine positional information while in the production area. The research has been limited in the past because the Bureau had only one type of mining machine to do experiments. Addressing the problem, the Bureau, along with Carnegie Mellon University, has developed a generic vehicle emulator, in the form of a wheeled vehicle with an onboard computer, known as the Locomotion Emulator, that provides a software-selectable vehicle emulation package. Preliminary testing by the Bureau has shown that the emulator can accurately imitate the maneuvers of the software-selected vehicle type. Now the Bureau can test navigation systems on different vehicle types without having to procure each of the vehicles. The report completely describes the emulator as well as all the modes in which it can be operated.