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The coal mine wind shaft is an important ventilation channel in coal mines, and it is of great significance to ensure its long-term safety. At present, the inspection of wind shafts still depends on manual work, which has low reliability and high risk. There are two main problems in the shaft wall detection of ventilation shafts: (1) The humidity and dust concentration in ventilation shafts are high, which makes imaging difficult; (2) the cracks on the shaft wall are long and irregular, so it is impossible to acquire the information of the whole crack from a single photo. Firstly, the mapping analysis between the concentration of water vapor and dust in the wind shaft and the image definition is determined by experiments. Then, the inspection robot is designed to move along the axial and circumferential directions to get close to the shaft wall, and the rack-and-rail drive design is adopted to ensure the real-time position feedback of the robot. Then, through the crack parameter detection method based on depth learning, the movement direction of the robot is controlled according to the crack direction so as to ensure that the complete crack parameters are obtained. Finally, the crack detection algorithm is verified by experiments. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

It is essential to provide disaster relief assistance after coal mine explosions. Often, it is life‐threatening for rescuers to enter an accident scene blindly; therefore, a coal mine rescue robot (CMRR) has been developed. However, the application of the CMRR has not proven satisfactory after decades of development. To solve this problem, we summarize the reasons for this disappointing state and address the technical challenges of the CMRR. Based on these reasons and the associated technical challenges, two generations of tracked robots have been developed. The China University of Mining Technology‐V (CUMT‐V) (A) robot was first developed and its walking system, body support system, communication system, environmental awareness system, and control system are described in detail. A performance test was performed on the CUMT‐V (A) robot and some problems were encountered. To address these problems, we designed the CUMT‐V (B) robot. The field test was conducted in Shanxi province, China, in August 2016. The application results show that the robot has good adaptability to complex terrain and high reliability in terms of environmental awareness and data transmission. In conclusion, the robot is nearing practical applications. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article proposes a novel gait on cylinders for a snake robot as well as arboreal concertina locomotion gait, including the generation method. The gait on the cylinder of a snake robot is a kind of spatial motion planning that is difficult in manual design. In this article, a planar gait of a snake robot is first constructed, followed by cylindrical gait via a transformation mechanism. In addition, a gait generating scheme of arboreal concertina locomotion gait of snake robots on cylinders is constructed and verified via a simulation platform. Such gait makes advantages on cylindrical motion capability of snake robots and the proposed generation approach for gait construction can be promoted to other cylindrical gaits, reducing design difficulty. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]