Advisory system supporting roadheader operator

Józef Jonak
Joanna Rogala-Rojek

Development of roadways with use of roadheaders is the basic work in the mining industry, which opens coal seams for extraction. In the Polish mining industry over 92% of roadways is driven by the method of cutting with roadheaders. The suggestion of advisory system, supporting the operator in selection of operational parameters, which are optimal in the local mining condition, possible to be implemented in the roadheader, is presented.

Bearing in mind state of the art as well as current trends in studies on roadheaders control systems, two variants of advisory system were suggested. The first variant is planned for current roadheaders with manual control of cutter head movement. The advisory system has to help the operators in selecting the optimal operational parameters, which would ensure effective use of power installed in the cutter head, in given mining and geological conditions. In the second variant, due to emerging trends of designing automatic, adaptive control systems for mining, fuzzy system for parameters selection, which could be installed at the inlet to the automatic control system of cutter head operation was suggested.