Instrumentation for Detecting Translation and Rotation of Tunneling Machines during their Movements

Research Project

Project/Area Number	06555307
Research Category	Grant-in-Aid for Developmental Scientific Research (B)
Allocation Type	Single-year Grants
Research Field	資源開発工学
Research Institution	Muroran Institute of Technology
Principal Investigator	SATO Kazuhiko Muroran Institute of Technology Dept.Computer Science & Systems Engineering, Professor, 工学部, 教授 (30002009)
Co-Investigator(Kenkyū-buntansha)	ITAKURA Kenichi Muroran Institute of Technology Dept.Computer Science & Systems Engineering, Ass, 工学部, 助教授 (20168298)
Project Period (FY)	1994 – 1995
Project Status	Completed (Fiscal Year 1995)
Budget Amount *help	¥4,700,000 (Direct Cost: ¥4,700,000) Fiscal Year 1995: ¥1,100,000 (Direct Cost: ¥1,100,000) Fiscal Year 1994: ¥3,600,000 (Direct Cost: ¥3,600,000)
Keywords	construction equipments / automatization / autonomous locomotion / simultaneous location of vehicle / laser ranger / CCD camera / レーザ・レンジャ / レーザ・レンジャー
Research Abstract	Detection of current location is one of key technologies to realize automatic positioning of a tunneling machine which is equipped with crawler for locomotion. In this research project, measuring systems for detecting translation and rotation of a tunneling machine have been developed. Two sensory systems were devised to detect change in the attitude of a tunneling machine using commercially available sensors ; one consists of a gyroscopic angular velocity sensor and two accelerometers, and the other replaces accelerometers by a couple of clinometers. A new algorithm was developed to determain three dimensional rotation from the outputs from three sensors. The attitude of a tunneling machine is first defined by the generalized rotation matrix, then represented in terms of roll, pitch and yaw. A laser ranger was employed to measure translation of a tunneling machine during its movement. The ranger consists of a laser emitter and a vision system. The emitter generates laser beam with a 650nm wavelength, and allows for the beam to point toward an arbitrary orientation. The vision system detect the laser beam spotted on a target by a CCD camera, and processes an image to locate the laser spot. The difference between two position vectors of the target from the machine that are measured before and after locomotion provides the translation of the vehicle. In this research, laboratory experiments were carried out to confirm the function of two sensory systems for detecting rotation and a ranging system. The experiments have resulted in not only revealing the instrumentation for detecting translation and rotation of a vehicle, but validating new algorithm for calculating three dimensional translation and rotation.