A Navigation System for Automated Loaders in Underground Mines

For underground mining operations human operated LHD vehicles are typically used for transporting ore. Because of security issues and of the cost of human operators, alternative solutions such as tele-operated vehicles are often in use. Tele-operation, however, leads to reduced efficiency, and it is not an ideal solution. Full automation of the LHD vehicles is a challenging task, which is expected to result in increased operational efficiency, cost efficiency, and safety. In this paper, we present our approach to a fully automated solution currently under development. We use a fuzzy behavior-based approach for navigation, and develop a cheap and robust localization technique based on the deployment of inexpensive passive radio frequency identification (RFID) tags at key points in the mine.