The world's first extremely cold open-pit coal mine 5G+ driverless project entered the demonstration operation.

BEIJING, Sept. 30 (Xinhua)-According to the report of China Voice "News Hyperlink" of the Central Radio and Television General Station, recently, the world's first 5G+ unmanned project in extremely cold open-pit coal mines-the unmanned truck marshalling safety demonstration project in extremely cold open-pit coal mines with complex climatic environment, passed the national industrial demonstration operation safety review and scientific and technological achievements appraisal, and the project entered the industrial demonstration operation, and the results reached the international advanced level.

Unmanned trucks run in Baorixile open-pit coal mine in the middle of Hulunbeier grassland in Inner Mongolia, and heavy harvesters with a total weight of nearly 400 tons shuttle freely in the mining area and operate 24 hours a day.

Baorixile open-pit coal mine is one of the northernmost large coal mines in China, and the lowest temperature at night in winter may even reach minus 50 degrees. The use of driverless trucks not only improves efficiency, but also improves the level of safe production.

What's the difference between a driverless truck and an ordinary truck? What are the benefits of developing the technology of driverless trucks? What challenges will the complex climatic environment bring to the operation of driverless trucks? Will unmanned truck technology be promoted in more mines in the future?

Does a driverless truck look like an ordinary truck?

Driverless trucks are upgraded from traditional harvesters, and the overall structure is not obviously different from ordinary trucks. However, unmanned trucks have added a number of supporting systems on the basis of traditional trucks, and the harvester has developed in the direction of intelligence through transformation.

The first is the network communication system, and a good network communication system is the guarantee to realize the data transmission between the unmanned mine card and the command and dispatch center. The second is the emergency management system, which can realize emergency treatment and fault treatment in an emergency and ensure the driving safety of the harvester during operation. The third is the collaborative operation management system. Unmanned transport vehicle can't complete the operation alone, so it needs to cooperate with bulldozers, graders and other equipment to form a complete open-air production system. In the future, an intelligent job management system is needed to help people remotely dispatch unmanned mine cards.

5G provides technical support for the smooth operation of unmanned mine cards and their supporting facilities. The characteristics of 5G broadband, high speed and low delay enhance the perception ability of unmanned mine card, thus improving the response speed of mine card. At the same time, the command and control room needs to monitor the mine card in real time, and remote monitoring will produce a large video stream, so it is necessary to use 5G to minimize the delay of the picture.

What are the benefits of using a driverless truck?

Xu Xu, deputy mine manager of Baorixile Open-pit Coal Mine of Dayan Baorixile Energy Company, said that the development of driverless truck technology is closely related to the national policy to promote the high-quality development of coal mines. In the practice of intelligent development and high-quality development of coal mines, unmanned driving is one of the first demonstration projects.

Unmanned driving can eliminate the safety hazards of manual operation as much as possible. There may be dangerous situations such as driver's illegal driving and fatigue driving in a manually driven harvester. Unmanned mine card can avoid the potential safety hazard in this respect, thus improving the safety factor of mine operation and reducing the safety problems caused by drivers' negligence.

At the same time, the development of driverless truck technology is conducive to improving the working environment of employees. The working environment under the mine is harsh, the dust problem is serious, and the waste discharge is large, which not only easily causes environmental pollution, but also has adverse effects on human health. Driverless technology liberates manpower from the mining area, keeps manpower away from the harsh working environment on site, and transfers some employees from the mining area to the dispatching command center, thus improving the working environment and quality of life of employees.

Driverless technology will also alleviate the shortage of coal miners. Although the initial development of driverless technology requires some investment, in the long run, the use cost of driverless mine cards is lower than the cost of hiring manpower. The unmanned mine card can run for a long time only by regular maintenance, and the workload is far greater than manpower. At the same time, with the iteration of technology upgrading, the production cost and transportation cost of unmanned mine cards will be reduced.

What challenges does the complex climate bring to the unmanned mine card? Will this technology be popularized in other mining areas in the future?

Baorixile Open-pit Coal Mine, located on the Mozigele River in Hulunbeier Grassland, is one of the northernmost large open-pit coal mines in China. The area has beautiful scenery in summer, but it is very cold in winter, and the lowest outdoor temperature in winter can reach MINUS 50 degrees Celsius. The extreme climate environment makes the operation of unmanned mine card face challenges.

On the one hand, extremely cold conditions easily lead to road icing, and how to realize the smooth control and safe operation of unmanned driving on the ice is one of the challenges in the application of unmanned driving technology. On the other hand, the mining area has heavy snow and foggy weather in winter. In such a climate environment, how to realize the accurate perception and feedback of driverless technology and help the driverless system make a reasonable decision-making plan is also a great challenge.

In order to cope with the complex climate environment of Baorixile open-pit coal mine, the unmanned mine card adopts components that can withstand extremely low temperature, and in addition, heat insulation measures are added to the components. At present, driverless trucks have passed the low temperature test. At the same time, the driverless truck also has a snow mode, which ensures the driving safety of the vehicle on the slippery road by controlling the speed. In terms of improving the perception ability, camera, millimeter wave radar, laser radar and other sensing devices are installed before and after the mine card, and powerful algorithm processing ability is equipped to help the mine card eliminate the interference of complex environment such as snow in winter and sand dust in summer on the perception ability.

In the initial stage of research and development of unmanned transportation system in Baorixile open-pit coal mine, the goal is to promote and copy. During the implementation of the project, researchers have been actively promoting the application of unmanned transportation system in other mining areas. In addition to Baorixile open-pit mining area, many other open-pit mining areas are also studying unmanned mine card operation technology. The researchers hope to play the leading role of unmanned transportation system in Baorixile open-pit coal mine, further promote the rapid progress of unmanned technology and promote the effective application of unmanned technology in other mines.

Xu Xu thinks that driverless control system may become the standard of mine card. At present, unmanned mine cards also have cabs, but with the continuous improvement of manufacturing capacity in China, mine cards may no longer need cabs, and we will usher in a smarter unmanned era.

Producer: Claire Guo