A Novel Rail Inspection Robot and Fault Detection Method for the Coal Mine Hoisting System

Rail is an important part of coal mine hoisting system, and its fault detection is an important work of mine daily maintenance. In this paper, a new inspection robot system and corresponding detection method are proposed to detect the faults in the rail of coal mine hoisting system. The robot system will replace the manual inspection work in the mine, and will greatly improve the efficiency of inspection. The robot is driven by a magnetic wheel to ensure its smooth motion on a vertical rail. In order to increase the adsorption capacity of the magnetic wheel, the halbach array based on multi block magnets is adopted in the magnetic wheel, and the relationship between the number of magnets and the adsorption force is analyzed. In addition, aiming at the problem of rail fault detection, a new method is proposed to estimate the rail deformation by using the robot's attitude perception. A method of robot positioning on rail is also proposed by combining fault detection as landmark and mileage estimation. Finally, the proposed method is verified by experiments. This inspection robot system can improve the efficiency of rail inspection of mine hoisting system, and the proposed detection scheme can also be extended to railway rail inspection.