Prometheus drones to explore subterranean environments

The £2.2m project, funded by Innovate UK, is a collaboration between Headlight AI, Callen-Lenz and Thales, the Universities of Manchester, Bristol and Royal Holloway London, and stakeholder Network Rail.

Due for completion in July, the aim is to provide solutions across industries where underground exploration in harsh conditions is crucial.

Dr Puneet Chhabra, co-founder of Headlight AI, said the project came about during a 2018 Innovate UK event. Chhabra took part in a discussion with Network Rail principal mining engineer Neal Rushton, Manchester University robotics engineer Simon Watson, Royal Holloway computer science professor Sara Bernardini and Bristol University aerial robotics professor Tom Richardson.

“We showed [Neal] some of the work that we’d done and he explained that his vision was to put a circular robot down a tiny 150mm [diameter] borehole next to a railway track,” Chhabra said. “There are thousands of these mines and voids under the tracks and they are interconnected - the limitation at the moment is that they don’t know what is beyond the line of sight, they don’t know what exists and how they are connected and so they aren’t being mapped or surveyed.”