Design And Implementation Of Automatic Truck Data Acquisition System For Surface Coal Mining

Data acquisition has always been a key point and obstacle in coal mining industry. To improve the efficiency of data acquisition, many big companies have invested a lot in optimizing coal mine data acquisition system. Production efficiency can be greatly increased and cost reduced by combining mining and information technology. The research is focused on the design of automatic information system, which collects data from the truck and transfers the data to central server in the office environment through WLAN.Data management for production records has become a key factor in surface coal mining operations. Information system (IS) and Information Technology (IT) play a very important role in monitoring and analyzing worker efficiency and device performance. An automatic truck data acquisition system (ATDAS) is developed in this study to record truck cycle and delay data in surface coal mining. The ATDAS proposed in this study can collect truck production data, delay time, loading and dumping times and GPS coordinates for mine production activities. It is possible to transfer data over the wireless network to a server located in the office. In addition, the system is compatible with existing integrated production management system (IPMS). Operation data are stored in each truck, and then synchronized and replicated to a central server that contains database management system for analysis and reporting. The system relies on motion sensing and travel distance, to automatically determine the beginning/end point, cycle length, position and delay time of the operation cycles. Connection and communication between the loading equipment and trucks have also been established. We also developed a user-friendly graphical interface for communication between equipment operators and ATDAS system. The infrastructure involved in the system development includes a touch screen PC, a 2.4GHz radio antenna and a commercial GPS receiver with high sensitivity. The system is developed, tested and deployed in a surface coal mine in Shanxi Province.The Automatic Truck Data Acquisition System designed in this research is applied and tested in a real surface coal mine in Shanxi Province. It is indicated that the system accomplishes the task of data acquisition successfully. The system architecture is of good reliability and extensibility, well meeting the expected demands of production and management.