CPS: Synergy: Collaborative Research: Enabling Smart Underground Mining with an Integrated Context-Aware Wireless Cyber-Physical Framework

CPS：协同：协作研究：通过集成的上下文感知无线网络物理框架实现智能地下采矿

基本信息

批准号：
1646562
负责人：
Sudeep Pasricha
金额：
$ 41.25万
依托单位：
Colorado State University
依托单位国家：
美国
项目类别：
Standard Grant
财政年份：
2016
资助国家：
美国
起止时间：
2016-10-01 至 2020-09-30
项目状态：
已结题

来源：
https://www.nsf.gov/awardsearch/showAward?AWD_ID=1646562&HistoricalAwards=false
关键词：
CPS Synergy Collaborative Research Enabling

项目摘要

To reduce reliance on other countries for minerals (e.g., coal, rare-earth metals), the USA has seen an invigoration of mining activity in recent years. Unfortunately, miners often have to work in dangerous environments where there is risk of mine explosions, fires, poisonous gases, and flooding in tunnels. Mine accidents have killed over 500 US and 40,000 mine workers worldwide in the past decade. Most of these accidents occurred in structurally diverse underground mines with extensive labyrinths of interconnected tunnels, where the environment continually changes as mining progresses and machinery is repositioned, complicating search and rescue efforts. In recognition of the severity of the problem, the Mine Improvement and New Emergency Response Act passed in 2006 mandated mines to monitor levels of methane, carbon monoxide, smoke, and oxygen to warn miners of possible danger due to air poisoning, fire, or explosions. The Act also mandated plans to rapidly and safely respond in post-accident scenarios, involving two-way, wired or semi-wired tracking and communication systems that could save lives during entrapment and water inundation emergencies. But the high cost of deploying such a safety infrastructure encourages companies today to meet only the bare minimum required safeguards. This project will involve transformative, foundational, and synergistic research that is necessary to overcome monitoring, communication, and tracking challenges in the underground mining context, to realize a cost-effective safety infrastructure that can be deployed in any type of underground mine. Such a framework will not only minimize the risks facing hundreds of thousands of miners in the USA today, but the foundational research outcomes will also be applicable to a wide range of applications in the realms of Smart and Connected Communities (S&CC) and Internet of Things (IoT), wherever the emphasis is on creating smart workplaces, sustainably operating in harsh environments, and improving human safety.The principal objective of this proposal is to devise, design, prototype, and test a fundamentally novel wireless cyber-physical framework of low-cost, energy-efficient, and reliable sensor nodes and commodity smartphones for monitoring, tracking, and communication, to improve miner safety in underground mines. This synergy project contributes to the science and engineering principles needed to realize Cyber-Physical Systems and seeks to grow at the intersection of three research thrusts: quality-aware voice and data streaming, mobile computing assisted location tracking, and computational electromagnetics driven wireless signal characterization. These three thrusts (1) introduce novel mechanisms to enable the co-existence of high quality voice streams with environmental sensor data streams in low-power wireless mesh networks of sensor nodes operating in noisy underground environments; (2) develop schemes for energy-efficient scheduling of location queries and error-tolerant indoor localization to locate individual miners and groups of miners underground; and (3) characterize wireless signal behavior with electromagnetic modeling in highly complex and uncertain environments, based on measurements from a real underground mine, to guide optimal placement of wireless nodes in mining tunnels. Not only is the convergence of these thrusts novel as a whole, but also the techniques and insights developed for each thrust are transformative and go beyond conventional approaches. Collaboration with a mining company for technology transfer will enable rapid real-world deployment of the proposed research. The broader impacts of the research will tightly integrate research results into all levels of teaching, including graduate, undergraduate, and K-12 education; broaden the participation of women and minority students in Cyber-Physical research; and integrate research into the syllabi of existing and new courses.

为了减少对其他国家矿产（例如煤炭、稀土金属）的依赖，美国近年来采矿活动有所活跃。不幸的是，矿工经常不得不在危险的环境中工作，存在矿井爆炸、火灾、有毒气体和隧道洪水的风险。过去十年中，矿难已导致 500 多名美国矿工和全球 40,000 名矿工死亡。这些事故大多数发生在结构多样的地下矿井中，这些矿井具有相互连接的大面积迷宫式隧道，随着采矿的进展和机械的重新定位，环境不断变化，使搜索和救援工作变得复杂。认识到问题的严重性，2006 年通过的《矿山改进和新紧急响应法案》强制矿山监测甲烷、一氧化碳、烟雾和氧气的水平，以警告矿工可能因空气中毒、火灾或爆炸而发生危险。该法案还规定了在事故发生后快速、安全地做出反应的计划，涉及双向有线或半有线跟踪和通信系统，这些系统可以在被困和水淹没紧急情况下挽救生命。但部署此类安全基础设施的高昂成本促使当今的公司只满足最低限度的安全保障要求。该项目将涉及克服地下采矿环境中的监测、通信和跟踪挑战所必需的变革性、基础性和协同研究，以实现可部署在任何类型的地下矿山中的具有成本效益的安全基础设施。这样的框架不仅可以最大限度地降低当今美国数十万矿工面临的风险，而且基础研究成果也将适用于智能互联社区（S＆CC）和物联网领域的广泛应用（物联网），无论重点是创建智能工作场所、在恶劣环境中可持续运行以及提高人类安全。该提案的主要目标是设计、设计、原型化和测试一种全新的低功耗无线网络物理框架。 -成本，用于监控、跟踪和通信的节能、可靠的传感器节点和商用智能手机，以提高地下矿井中矿工的安全。该协同项目有助于实现网络物理系统所需的科学和工程原理，并寻求在三个研究重点的交叉点上发展：质量感知语音和数据流、移动计算辅助位置跟踪以及计算电磁学驱动的无线信号表征。这三个推动力 (1) 引入了新颖的机制，使高质量语音流与环境传感器数据流能够在嘈杂的地下环境中运行的传感器节点的低功耗无线网状网络中共存； (2) 开发位置查询的节能调度和容错室内定位方案，以定位地下个体矿工和矿工组； (3) 基于真实地下矿山的测量，在高度复杂和不确定的环境中通过电磁建模来表征无线信号行为，以指导采矿隧道中无线节点的最佳放置。这些主旨的融合不仅在整体上是新颖的，而且为每个主旨开发的技术和见解都是变革性的，超越了传统方法。与一家矿业公司合作进行技术转让将使所提议的研究能够在现实世界中快速部署。该研究的更广泛影响将把研究成果紧密地融入各级教学，包括研究生、本科生和 K-12 教育；扩大女性和少数族裔学生对网络物理研究的参与；并将研究纳入现有和新课程的教学大纲中。