Auxiliary Supporting Equipment

To support some of the equipment described elsewhere, the following pieces of auxiliary equipment and software will be developed.

Vehicle Processing Hub

The vehicle processing hub serves the purpose of a control centre for the unmanned exploratory vehicles that will be developed and a means of easily carrying several such vehicles to the area where they will be deployed. As such it takes the form of a vehicle, but a much smaller vehicle than the one referred to in the following section. This is an essential characteristic given that it is an aim, wherever possible, to be able to deploy the exploratory vehicles at a very early stage in an incident response in order to achieve key data to help further plan the response.

Unmanned Transport Vehicle

Although the rationale of the research and development of drilling equipment and roof supports is to provide maximum performance while minimising the size and weight of the equipment, such equipment will still require a vehicle to transport it to the area where it will be deployed. As such, an electric powered unmanned vehicle, capable of being controlled by accompanying rescuers, will be developed.