Secure the mine : Concept development of remote control station for a ABB robot including investigation of operations for automation in industrial mining to increase operators’ safety

• Main Authors: Gustafsson, Hanna, Henricson, Caroline
• Format: Bachelor Thesis
• Language: English
• Published: 2014
• Subjects: Technology; Teknik; Industrial design engineering; concept development; automation; industrial robot; industrial mining; operators’ safety; usability; remote control station; haptic feedback; ABB; Luleå
• Online Access: http://urn.kb.se/resolve?urn=urn:nbn:se:ltu:diva-59416

Industrial mining is an area where automation have been researched the last couple of years, with the intentions to increase workplace safety. This Master Thesis Secure the mine is aimed to develop a concept for a remote control station used with a ABB robot in industrial mining, to minimize manual high-risk tasks and hence increase operators’ safety. The project was performed by Hanna Gustafsson and Caroline Henricson, Industrial design engineering students at Luleå University of technology, in collaboration with ABB Corporate Research in Västerås, where the project was initiated to secure hazardous production sites by using automation and the help of a robotic system.The project focused on two operations in mining; charging and media installatio. It was identified through observations of field study-material, occupational injury statistics, expert’s knowledge and previous automation projects that the charging operation was a suitable operation of automation. It is based on a tripartite level of human-robot interaction: autonomous, master-slave and teacher-learner mode. Through theories of usability, accident prevention and automation together with analysis of the charging process and operators’ needs, two remote control station concepts were developed throughout an extensive creative process. One is to be used through remote interaction above ground and one used through proximity interaction underground. The result includes interaction between a supervising operator remotely located, assisting underground operators working with a IRB 2600 industrial robot. The remote control stations include visual simplistic information and navigation systems together with a haptic controller used for manual control of the robot to facilitate and secure the charging operation. Validerat; 20140908 (global_studentproject_submitter)