Automation of a load-haul-dump (LHD) unit

Abstract

The load-haul-dump (LHD) unit is used extensively in underground mining to perform a variety of tasks within this field. The underground mining environment is extremely dangerous where some LHD accidents have caused major injury and occasional deaths to the operators onboard these vehicles as well as other mining crew, this is why a control system implemented onto these vehicles would be ideal. This project investigates and finally implements of a tele-operated and automated control system onto an existing scale model of a LHD unit. Since the tele-operated system uses a camera, it was decided that the automated system would also use a simple type of machine vision in its guidance.