Oxpecker: A Tethered UAV for Inspection of Stone-Mine Pillars

This paper presents a state-of-the-art tethered unmanned aerial vehicle (TUAV) for structural integrity assessment of underground stone mine pillars. The TUAV, powered by its tether, works in tandem with an ground (UGV) that hosts the TUAV batteries, self-leveled landing platform, and tether management system. UGV were named Rhino Oxpecker, respectively, given stays landed on while ensemble moves inside mine. mission Oxpecker is to create, using LiDAR sensor, 3D maps pillars support time-lapse hazard mapping time-dependent pillar degradation analysis. Given height (7–12 m), this task cannot be executed alone. describes drone’s hardware software. includes system, designed control tension perception which provides information can used localization global navigation satellite systems (GNSS)-denied environments. vehicle’s software based state machine controls several phases (i.e., takeoff, inspection, landing) coordinating drone motion tethering also evaluates our approach tether-based autonomous We show experiments illustrate validate system laboratories mines.