A Comprehensive Dataset for Underground Miner Detection in Diverse Scenario

Abstract

Underground mining operations face significant safety challenges that make emergency response capabilities crucial. While robots have shown promise in assisting with search and rescue operations, their effectiveness depends on reliable miner detection capabilities. Deep learning algorithms offer potential solutions for automated miner detection, but require comprehensive training datasets, which are currently lacking for underground mining environments. This paper presents a novel thermal imaging dataset specifically designed to enable the development and validation of miner detection systems for potential emergency applications. We systematically captured thermal imagery of various mining activities and scenarios to create a robust foundation for detection algorithms. To establish baseline performance metrics, we evaluated several state-of-the-art object detection algorithms including YOLOv8, YOLOv10, YOLO11, and RT-DETR on our dataset. While not exhaustive of all possible emergency situations, this dataset serves as a crucial first step toward developing reliable thermal-based miner detection systems that could eventually be deployed in real emergency scenarios. This work demonstrates the feasibility of using thermal imaging for miner detection and establishes a foundation for future research in this critical safety application.

Department(s)

Mining Engineering

Comments

National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health, Grant U60OH012350-01-00

Keywords and Phrases

Dataset; Deep Learning; Object Detection; Thermal Image; Underground Emergency; Underground Mine

International Standard Book Number (ISBN)

978-303214494-2

International Standard Serial Number (ISSN)

1611-3349; 0302-9743

Document Type

Article - Conference proceedings

Document Version

Citation

File Type

text

Language(s)

English

Rights

© 2026 Springer, All rights reserved.

Publication Date

01 Jan 2026

Link to Full Text

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