XES Automation is a startup in the field of surveillance and surveying technologies. We plan to start providing mobile robotic solutions for government sector and enormous private sector industries with our prime focus on the mining industry, defence operations and public safety. The company was informally formed in March, 2014 and is ready to roll out its first remote survey robot TASSA-X in 2015, with a mission of re-allocating the 297 recorded abandoned/orphaned mines of India saving up to 10 billion tons of just coal reserves. Similar designs to TASSA-X have promised an increase of productivity of up to 30% in Korean mines. The secondary objective of TASSA-X variant is to serve in the military operations across the border for surveillance and for hazardous material handling operations for in Indian police.

2. CONTENTS
1.Who are we?
2. Our plan
3. Our team
4. Our Motive
5. Technology(Basic)
6. Technology (Advanced)

3. WHO ARE WE?
TASSA-X is a project initiated by a group of
students from MIT, Manipal.
TASSA-X promises safer mines for tomorrow
with the application of advanced technology
that can help transform the mines from what we
know them as today.

4. Our Plan
TASSA-X plans to build an advanced mobile
robot equipped with numerous sensors for
detecting changes in the underground mine
atmosphere, map the changes in the structures
of the mines in real time in 3D and help reduce
human risks by easily learning about
inaccessible or dangerous regions of a mine.

5. Our Team
Our team comprises of engineering students:
Mayank Gupta
Dept. of Mechatronics,
MIT, Manipal
Aadarsh Mehndiratta
Dept. of Mechatronics,
MIT, Manipal
Anirban Ghosh,
Dept. of Mechanical
Engineering,
MIT, Manipal
Satish Reddy
Dept. of Mechanical
Engineering,
MIT, Manipal

6. Our Motive
• Many mine accidents in India including the worst Mine
disaster (Chasnala Mine accident, which resulted in the
death of 375 workers) are a result of improper mapping or
failing to update the maps regularly and absence of
advanced mobile sensor feedback systems.
• Our motive is to make the mines
a safer place and at the same time
increase productivity by not letting
raw material get wasted due to risks
involved by intrusions of humans in
these areas.

7. Technology(Basic)
• Advanced RGBD camera onboard for 3-D mapping and
visual odometry. Novel algorithms for calculating the
volumetric dimensions around the mobile robot.
• Numerous gaseous sensors
for air quality checks in the
environment of the robot.
The sensors shall include
CH4, CO2, CO, NH3, NOx, etc.
to name a few. 3-D point cloud of an underground mine

8. Technology(Basic)
• The Robot comes with the state of the art control panel
to monitor and drive the robot from the control room
wirelessly.
• Strong, durable and intelligently
designed advanced mechanical
design to ease out locomotion
inside the mine while enduring
the dust, water and external
strains/impacts. Sample view of monitoring interface

9. Technology(Basic)
• Android interface for monitoring data on the go.
The Mine shall be covered with Wifi network for
communication purposes.
• IR cameras on board which
will not hinder video feed
even in darkness.
• Small sample collector mechanism for collecting
and saving samples of the regolith for future
analysis.

10. Technology(Basic)
• Piggy-back amphibian robot of a small
dimension to enter through small crevices and
gaps or water flooding with onboard wireless
cameras and major sensors.

11. Technology(Advanced)
1. Electronics
2. Computer Vision
3. Electrical
4. Mechanical
5. Mining

12. Electronics
The major inspiration behind our electronics
subsystem is to use off the shelf hardware yet
technologically so advanced, that the future
changes and modifications can easily be adapted.
Consumer’s comfort in the ease of running and
modifying the equipment has been given extra
attention.

13. Electronics
The major inspiration behind our electronics
subsystem is to use off the shelf hardware yet
technologically so advanced, that the future
changes and modifications can easily be adapted.
Consumer’s comfort in the ease of running and
modifying the equipment has been given extra
attention.

14. Electronics
Basic Requirements
1. Windows Platform – We plan to use a simple
windows platform so as to run softwares like visual
c++, MATLAB, Labview, python etc. Simultaneously
if required without the need for special expertise.
This ensures, engineers with basic programming
background can customize the software according
to their mining company and mine requirements.

15. Electronics
Basic Requirements
2. MicroController-We plan to use off the shelf
Arduino Due microcontrollers(Atmel SAM3X8E
ARM Cortex-M3) for monitoring data from the
sensors. The data is then sent to the onboard
computer for number crunching through UART.

16. Electronics
Basic Requirements
3. Sensors – We require industrial grade, dust
proof sensor encased in sealed packages to
avoid misread of data.
4. Cameras- We plan to use a Microsoft Kinect
for RGBD video feed coupled with a high fps
Pointgrey Flea3 1.3mp camera.

17. Electronics
Windows Platform
Windows is proved to be one of the most
flexible operating systems around for developers
around the world.
Our platform will use a Windows 7 operating
system for the on board computer.

18. Electronics(Windows)
Windows Platform
The Windows OS is to be mounted on an Intel Core
i5-3337u Processor.
Reasons: The 3337u is a low clockspeed(1.8GHz)
dual core processor with turbo boost technology
2.0. This will ensure that in an idle state, the
processor needs much lower power and save
battery power. With the turbo boost technology the
processor can reach speeds upto 2.7GHz.

19. Electronics(Windows)
MotherBoard
We plan to go with a high quality
motherboard to perform with
high durability.
Gigabyte GA-H87N-WIFI is a 4th
generation intel supporting motherboard.
GIGABYTE uses All Solid Caps (Capacitors) and Low RDS(on)
MOSFETs which are rated to work at higher temperatures to
provide a longer lifespan.
It is categorized in the Ultra-Durable motherboards.

20. Electronics(Windows)
RAM
Corsair Vengeance DDR3 4 GB (1 x 4 GB)
4 GB 1600 MHz DDR3 DIMM
SSD
Intel 520 120 GB SSD Internal Hard Drive (2.5 inch) . SATA 6.0 Gbps ( Compatible with
the motherboard)
Reason : In a rough terrain, a lot of vibrations are present. This makes the optical disk
drive very tough to operate smoothly and computer crashes often.
GPU
The motherboard comes with 1Gb integrated shared graphics memory. We shall add
an additional dedicated graphics card if required in later stages.

21. Electronics(MicroController)
Microcontroller – Arduino Due
The Arduino Due is a microcontroller
board based on the Atmel SAM3X8E
ARM Cortex-M3 CPU. Arduino is an
opensource hardware that comes
with pre-installed libraries to simplify
the interaction of physical units such
as sensors and actuators with the
software.

22. Electronics(MicroController)
Microcontroller – Arduino Due
The arduino Due comes loaded with 54 digital
I/O pins, 12 pwm digital I/O pins and 12 analog
Input pins.
It has an 84MHz processor and a 96KB SRAM.

23. Electronics(MicroController)
Kinect for Windows 2.0
The Kinect for Windows sensor is a physical device with
depth sensing technology, a built-in color camera, an
infrared (IR) emitter, and a microphone array.
The v2 sensor’s color camera is enhanced with full 1080p
video.
Depth sensing 512 x 484 30 Hz FOV: 70 x 60
1080p color camera 30 Hz (15 Hz in low light)
New active infrared (IR) capabilities 512x484, 30 Hz

24. Electronics(MicroController)
PointGrey Cricket 1.3 MP Color IP (Sony IMX139)
PointGrey got this amazing product for industrial use at an entry level. It needs to be
used to give a high quality crisp video feed/record to investigate the mine more
clearly. Being an IP camera, it can easily feed video through common softwares like
VLC. Here are the technical specifications:
• Sony IMX139 1/3" CMOS
• 1280 x 1024 at 60 FPS
• Color
• CS-Mount
• RJ45 100Base-TX for data and power(PoE),
4-pin DC auto-iris connector
• 88.1 x 44 x 32 mm

25. Mechanical Design
Basic Considerations
• The Chassis needs to be built using a light weight aluminium alloy to keep the
weight of the robot under 30kg(inclusive all components). The weight needs to be
set low for keeping convenience of transportation inside and outside the mine.
• A High ground clearance is kept for avoiding boulders from hitting the robot often.
The casing of the robot helps prevent the components in any case.
• To allow maximum traction on the wet and marshy regions inside mines, a tank
belt drive needs to be used instead of standard wheel design.

26. Mechanical Design
Basic designs

27. Mechanical Design
Basic designs

28. Mechanical Design
Basic designs

29. Mechanical Design
Secondary shaft
The secondary shaft is used
to eliminate direct shocks to
the motors in case of impacts.
The secondary shaft is contained
in a bearing housing with collars
as shown in the figure.

30. Mechanical Design
Motor Vibration Control
The motors can give out huge vibrations on full load. Balsa wood has been used to
suppress some vibrations. Balsa is a light weight addition known to take a few shocks
and has high strength to weight ratio.

31. Mechanical Design
Double Gear system
The Robot is driven through a double gear
system where the primary motor shaft drives
the compound secondary shaft. The bigger
gear/sprocket on the secondary shaft drives
the tank belt drive. This assures maximum
power transmission in case of getting stuck in
mushy/marshy regions.

32. VISION SYSTEMS
Vision approach
In the general trend of robotics, LIDARS are extensively
used to make point clouds of accurate measurements
and high densities.
While LIDARS are the ultimate option for the 3-D mapping
of any mine, our current approach is to make it more
affordable as a student project.
We intend to use the high quality RGBD Microsoft Kinect 2
cameras. These can provide a very accurate RGBD point
clouds as compared to its contemporary competitors .

33. VISION SYSTEMS
Vision approach
The approach to the 3-D mapping of the mine is
divided into 2 main categories:
1. Visual Odometry
Visual odometry is a relatively new concept in the imaging
industry. RGBD cameras give a great advantage for
carrying out odometry using camera vision in a
confined space.
2. Plotting of various points into the 3-d map
Knowing our position inside the mine relative to the
origin/ starting point of the mine, the next task is plotting
the current points returned in real time to the location and
orientation in the 3-D map. This is done through calculating
the depth of feature detection points in our algorithm.

34. MINING SYSTEMS
Mining approach
The approach to the mining systems is unique and advanced in this project. The main reason being, the
current sensory applications of the mining survey departments take place through conventional
methods set decades back in India, and the industry is still not exposed to the technological
advancements and method of retrieving data.
Another lacking sub system in the mining industry is the interpretation of the data returned by such
robots.
While such data has previously been retrieved from the conventional systems such as tube bundle
systems and samplers, the time taken for the analysis of this data is conventionally in hours sometimes.
With the advanced sensors installed on the robot, the data will be interpreted quickly in the controlling
system and displayed through conventional results. This simplifies the transition of engineers into the
new technology, while they get the information almost instantly from interiors of the mines without
manually accessing it.

35. MINING SYSTEMS
Mining approach
For easing the transition of the mining engineers our analysis systems visualize the data
results instantly in some known formats such as :
1. Coward methane diagram
The Coward methane representation of the
methane readings ensure an easy to read and
quick to interpret graph for detecting dangerous
levels of methane in the atmosphere. It relates
to the direct oxygen levels in the surroundings that
support the combustion of methane in that particular
environment.

36. MINING SYSTEMS
Mining approach
2. Strang and Wood interpretation
The Strang and Wood interpretation for the
levels of CO affecting the human body is another
visually efficient way of detecting dangerous levels
of toxication of the blood. Our Robot shall ensure
a surveillance system takes a check on the miners
and their fatigue. This shall then cross reference with
the actual CO readings from the sensors and develop
an intelligent system for saving tragedies.

37. MINING SYSTEMS
Mining approach
3. Setting threshold limits for multiple gasses:
The literature often explains thresholds for single
gas in the atmosphere depending on the human
body reaction to these thresholds.
We adopt a simple threshold setting algorithm
for multiple gasses depending on their site of action
on the human body and their threshold individually.