Karam Almaghout

Autonomous navigation in underground mining poses a unique set of challenges, from GPS unavailability and high dust levels that compromise visual sensors to feature-poor environments that complicate localization and narrow tunnels that restrict vehicle movement. To address these issues, this paper presents a novel behavior-based control approach, integrating wallfollowing for lateral stability as the vehicle progresses toward designated positions. The path to these targets is generated by an A* algorithm, ensuring efficient route planning within confined spaces. For localization, an Extended Kalman Filter (EKF) fuses data from wheel odometry and an Inertial Measurement Unit (IMU), providing robust state estimation in the absence of GPS. The proposed system leverages a four-wheel steering mechanism with negative-phase control and is equipped with 3D LiDAR, ultrasonic sensors, wheel encoders, and an IMU for enhanced situational awareness and control. Simulation results validate the system’s ability to achieve precise navigation in challenging underground environments, even within tunnels that allow minimal clearance.

Although deformable linear objects (DLOs), such as cables, are widely used in the majority of life fields and activities, the robotic manipulation of these objects is considerably more complex compared to the rigid-body manipulation and still an open challenge. In this paper, we introduce a new framework using two robotic arms cooperatively manipulating a DLO from an initial shape to a desired one. Based on visual servoing and computer vision techniques, a perception approach is proposed to detect and sample the DLO as a set of virtual feature points. Then a manipulation planning approach is introduced to map between the motion of the manipulators end effectors and the DLO points by a Jacobian matrix. To avoid excessive stretching of the DLO, the planning approach generates a path for each DLO point forming profiles between the initial and desired shapes. It is guaranteed that all these intershape profiles are reachable and maintain the cable length constraint. The framework and the aforementioned approaches are validated in real-life experiments.