Safety problem in the underground mines:

The physical and geographical complexity of tunnels in underground mines impairs the visibility of environment and operating assets, including human beings.Irrespective of the acuteness of locating mineral though proper mining design and planning, the hazards of the sub-terrestrial world remains unpredictable. This increases the vulnerability of the miners.

Most of the available technologies are restricted in being reactive rather than proactive, which means that it can not predict an imminent disaster situation. And, once the disaster strikes sub-terrestrially, it leaves very little window of opportunity to control the disaster from getting worse. The various causes of mine disaster, such as mud slides, breaking into old mines, active faults in geological structure, water breakage, toxic gas emissions, fire, roof collapses, suffocations etc. all lead to catastrophic proportions because of the loss of human lives as trapped miners. The prolonged time it takes for the rescuers to reach the victims claims more life than the disaster itself.

Solution:

PervCom’s Active RFID based Real Time Locating System (RTLS) and Real Time Sensing System (RTSS), which consists of small wearable Intrinsically Safe PervTrack Locator Tags, intelligent network of PervTrack Localizers/Routers, a PervTrack Gateway and PervTrack system software suite which enable location and environment monitoring on a real-time basis. The Locator Tags attached to the miners or assets are capable forming a network between them even under constant mobility.

The flexibility to attach gas sensors, capable of sensing toxic gasses such as carbon monoxide, carbon dioxide, methane, sulphur dioxide etc. and to subsequently transmit that information in real time to a monitoring station on the surface creates the absolute critical visibility of the sub-terrestrial mining world. PervTrack Locator Tags are capable of communicating in both directions, so the miners can also communicate with the control station and vice versa.

Architecture of Integrated Platform
for Real Time Locating and Sensing System

The localizers/routers are placed in strategic locations in the various mining tunnels and they are capable of forming autonomous, fault tolerant and robust wireless network. Specific sensors can be placed in critical locations and they can detect the environmental parameters continuously to predict imminent disasters.

The integrated nature of the system enables the location tracking of every individual tagged object as well as miner in time of imminent disaster and subsequently sends alarms to warn the miners to take necessary actions, such as evacuation. Even in case of disaster recovery, this real time location information is critical for prompt and effective rescue operation. Thus, we can see the completeness and effectiveness of such integrated real time location tracking and sensing system in improving the mine safety tremendously.