No abstract

The absolute three-dimensional position of a longwall shearer is fundamental to longwall mining automation. The positioning of the longwall shearer is usually realized by the inertial navigation system (INS) and odometer (OD). However, the position accuracy of this positioning approach gradually decreases over time due to the gyro drift. To further increase the positioning accuracy of the shearer, this paper proposes a positioning approach based on the INS and light detection and ranging (LiDAR). A Kalman filter (KF) model based on the observation provided by detecting hydraulic supports which are part of the longwall face, using the LiDAR, is established. The selection scheme of the point features is studied through a set of simulations. In addition, compared with that of the approach based on the INS and OD, the shearer positioning accuracy obtained using the proposed approach is higher. When the shearer moves along a 350 m track for 6 cutting cycles and lasts about 7.1 h, both east and north position errors can be maintained within 0.2 m and the height error within 0.1 m.

The instability of scale factor and null shift are closely related to the change of the light intensity of a total reflection prism laser gyro (TRPLG). To improve the light intensity stability, the light intensity stabilization principle of TRPLG was analyzed, and a mathematical model of light intensity stabilization system was established. Aiming at the problem that original system has a long adjustment time, a series correction method of adding a proportional integral differential (PID) link in the forward channel was adopted. According to the third-order optimal design, the original I-type third-order overdamped system was optimized to the new II-type third-order underdamped system, which ultimately improved the system's dynamic and steady-state performance. Feedforward compensation was used to introduce the light intensity disturbance during the longitudinal mode hopping into the closed-loop system, which realized the full compensation of the light intensity error and improved the light intensity characteristics during the longitudinal mode hopping. Combined with the above two methods, experimental results showed that the new system with feedforward compensation improved the light intensity stability by 32% at constant temperature and by 40% at variable temperature, with the TRPLG's bias stability improved by more than 16% at constant temperature and by 22% at variable temperature.

The carrier-to-noise ratio (C/N0) is an important indicator of the signal quality of global navigation satellite system receivers. In a vector receiver, estimating C/N0 using a signal amplitude Kalman filter is a typical method. However, the classical Kalman filter (CKF) has a significant estimation delay if the signal power levels change suddenly. In a weak signal environment, it is difficult to estimate the measurement noise for CKF correctly. This article proposes the use of the adaptive strong tracking Kalman filter (ASTKF) to estimate C/N0. The estimator was evaluated via simulation experiments and a static field test. The results demonstrate that the ASTKF C/N0 estimator can track abrupt variations in C/N0 and the method can estimate the weak signal C/N0 correctly. When C/N0 jumps, the ASTKF estimation method shows a significant advantage over the adaptive Kalman filter (AKF) method in terms of the time delay. Compared with the popular C/N0 algorithms, the narrow-to-wideband power ratio (NWPR) method, and the variance summing method (VSM), the ASTKF C/N0 estimator can adopt a shorter averaging time, which reduces the hysteresis of the estimation results.

Traditional compensation methods based on temperature-related parameters are not effective for complex total reflection prism laser gyro (TRPLG) bias variation. Because the high frequency oscillator voltage (UHFO) fundamentally affects the TRPLG bias, and the UHFO has a stronger correlation with the TRPLG bias when compared with the temperature, an introduction of UHFO into the TRPLG bias compensation can be evaluated. In consideration of the limitations of least squares (LS) regression and multivariate stepwise regression, we proposed a compensation method for TRPLG bias based on iterative re-weighted least squares support vector machine (IR-LSSVM) and compared with LS regression, stepwise regression, and LSSVM algorithm in large temperature cycling experiments. When temperature, slope of temperature variation, and UHFO were selected as inputs, the IR-LSSVM based on myriad weight function improved the TRPLG bias stability by 61.19% to reach the maximum and eliminated TRPLG bias drift. In addition, the UHFO proved to be the most important parameter in the process of TRPLG bias compensation; accordingly, it can alleviate the shortcomings of traditional compensation based on temperature-related parameters and can greatly improve the TRPLG bias stability.