Rotary boring mining machine inertial steering system

An inertial guidance mining system to enable precise excavation of geological material without a need to advance a survey line over a long distance and/or a nonlinear excavation path, the inertial guidance mining system comprising:

• a mining machine having a steerable drive mechanism configured to advance the mining machine along an intended excavation path;
• a bridge operably coupled to the mining machine, the bridge being configured to align behind the miner machine to aid installation of hardware of a conveyor assembly behind the mining machine,
• an inertial guidance system configured to sense movement of the mining machine and provide directional guidance as an aid in guiding the steerable drive mechanism along the intended excavation path, the inertial guidance system including—
• at least one accelerometer configured to sense acceleration along an x-axis of the mining machine, along a y-axis of the mining machine, and/or along a z-axis of the mining machine;
• at least one gyroscope configured to sense rotation about the x-axis of the mining machine, rotation about the y-axis of the mining machine, and/or rotation about the z-axis of the mining machine;
• a programmable logic controller configured to receive sensed acceleration data from the at least one accelerometer and/or rotation data from the at least one gyroscope, determine movement of the mining machine as a function of time, compute directional guidance to maintain advancement of the mining machine along the intended excavation path, and aid in maintaining the bridge in alignment with the mining machine;
• and
• a memory configured to store the movement of the mining machine as a function of time.