Improving Safety in Cyber Enabled Underground Mines

Abstract

Numerous underground mine accidents in the past worldwide highlight the importance and urgent need for safer, more effective, and more reliable mine safety procedures and regulations. Ensuring the safety of miners in underground mine environments is however an extremely challenging aspect of mining operations today, due to the highly non-uniform nature of mining, dynamic operation of the mines, co-existence of the miners and heavy machineries, and a multitude of risk factors such as mine explosions, fires, poisonous gases, cave-ins and flooding. In this paper, we present a comprehensive literature review on the research progress in using smart computing technologies to improve underground mine safety. In particular, we discuss state-of-the-art research in wireless sensor networks and robotics with a particular focus on improving underground mine safety. We present our understanding of the unique challenges in improving safety in underground mines and future research directions. The research described here can be applied to other underground environments such as human made tunnels, underground urban spaces, and natural cave systems.