A see-in-the-dark monitoring and navigational system intended to improve safety in underground mines is being developed by a University of South Carolina computer science and engineering team in collaboration with researchers in India.
Sanjib Sur, an associate professor in the Molinaroli College of Engineering and Computing, is helping design a system that uses millimeter-wave technology to provide real-time monitoring in underground mines. The three-year project is co-funded by the National Science Foundation and India’s Department of Science and Technology.
“Traditional sensors such as cameras and LIDAR struggle in the dark, dusty and debris-filled environment that’s common in mines,” says Sur, who is collaborating with personnel at the Indian Institute of Technology and the Indian School of Mines. “Millimeter-wave technology emits very high frequency but low-power electromagnetic waves that are not affected by those conditions — it can see through the dark and penetrate most of the debris and dust particles in a mine.”
In the field-testing portion of the project, the MineSense technology will deploy millimeter-wave sensors throughout a coal mine, gathering data to create a real-time, three-dimensional map of the mine. MineSense will allow mine operators to monitor and map the structure of the mine even during excavation, something that isn’t possible with current mine-monitoring technology, Sur says.
“Millimeter-wave technology also gives you a very high bandwidth, more than 100 times compared to today’s LTE and Wi-Fi systems,” Sur says. “The challenge is, because it’s such a high frequency, it’s not very robust. Part of our research effort is to make a better, more resilient networking infrastructure that provides guaranteed communication as workers and machines move from one part of the mine to another.”
“Millimeter-wave technology emits very high frequency but low-power electromagnetic waves that are not affected by those conditions — it can see through the dark and penetrate most of the debris and dust particles in a mine.”
As the project draws to a close in 2027, Sur and his colleagues look forward to testing the system in a mining simulator in India and, later, in an actual mine there.
“One of the challenges that will be critical going forward is to make the system fireproof because fire is a big hazard in mines,” Sur says. “We’re designing it in such a way that it can be placed inside fireproof boxes and still function as needed.”
Sur gravitated toward computer science in high school because of his interest in solving puzzles, logic and general math. When he acquired his first personal computer in college, Sur’s fascination with the field grew deeper as he saw what could be accomplished by writing computer code. He began working on millimeter-wave technology while pursuing a doctoral degree at the University of Wisconsin-Madison.
“Academia felt natural to me because I enjoy pushing the boundaries of knowledge with research,” he says. “Bringing this cutting-edge technology of millimeter wave to bear on making mines safer and more efficient through our MineSense project is gratifying. This type of research is what I enjoy most apart from teaching and mentoring next-generation researchers.”