Miners become "white-collar workers" and use electric shovels to mine in the office

At the South Open pit Coal Mine of Inner Mongolia Huolinhe Open pit Coal Industry Co., Ltd. of State Power Investment Corporation, Jia Wentao, the driver of the electric shovel wearing a white shirt, sat in the remote control room, 

watching the high-definition display screen and accurately operating a large mining electric shovel 5 kilometers away. This unmanned electric shovel operates along the mountain, excavates ore, flexibly turns, and places ore... In no time, 

the mining truck is filled. Sitting in the office, you can remotely drive an electric shovel to mine, and you no longer have to work in open-pit mines, "Jia Wentao said with a smile." I've become a 'white-collar worker' too

This is the operational scenario of the intelligent remote control automatic loading system for open-pit mine electric shovels. The core equipment used in the scene is independently developed by the National Key Laboratory of Intelligent 

Mining Equipment Technology of Taiyuan Heavy Machinery Group Co., Ltd. (hereinafter referred to as Taiyuan Heavy Machinery Group). Recently, the National Mining Safety Supervision Administration and the Ministry of Industry and

 Information Technology announced the list of typical application scenarios for robots in the mining field for 2023, and the scenario was successfully selected.

Keep miners away from harsh working environments

According to statistics, there are about 28000 mines in China, including about 4000 coal mines and 12000 metal mines. Most open-pit mines are located in areas with high temperatures, high altitudes, and harsh working environments.

 In some areas, there is still a lack of oxygen, and the vibration, dust, and noise at the work site are high. Under long-term sunlight, the surface temperature of the mining site can sometimes rise to over 50 ℃, "said Li Guang, Executive 

Deputy Director of the National Key Laboratory of Intelligent Mining Equipment Technology of Taizhong Group." Building an 'intelligent mine' is to use intelligent equipment to help miners stay away from harsh work sites

Therefore, Taizhong Group has decided to develop a "package" of mining intelligent equipment, such as an intelligent remote control system for open-pit mining electric shovels, to create an intelligent remote control and automatic loading

 scenario for open-pit mining electric shovels, achieving unmanned mining through intelligent continuous operation and unmanned transportation.

Open pit mining operations include processes such as drilling, blasting, mining, transportation, breaking, and excavation. Yue Haifeng, Director of the Intelligence Institute of the National Key Laboratory of Intelligent Mining Equipment 

Technology of Taizhong Group, introduced that the intelligent remote control system for open-pit mining electric shovels is mainly applied in two operational scenarios: mining and loading. Our research and development goals are 

autonomous perception, autonomous planning, automatic excavation, flexible rotation, and precise unloading, striving to truly achieve 'smart operation', "said Yue Haifeng.

However, due to the complex terrain of the mine, achieving this goal is not easy. Yue Haifeng introduced that in order for miners to remotely operate equipment as if they were on site, it is necessary to have the machine "observe all 

directions and listen to all directions" and handle various problems in real time. In the process of scene construction, Yue Haifeng and his team have overcome a series of core technologies such as high-speed and low latency wireless

 communication, complex environment panoramic perception, intelligent assisted mining and loading, and data-driven intelligent fault diagnosis.

We spent over two years tackling each technical challenge to ensure precise on-site operations, "said Yue Haifeng." In the intelligent remote control and automatic loading scenario of open-pit mining electric shovels, on-site operation

 information can be converted into digital language that machines can 'understand'. After precise and rapid analysis by artificial intelligence, auxiliary decision-making is formed, combined with dynamic models to assist in operating 

equipment, making remote operators feel like they are operating on site.

Decoding and encoding should not exceed 140 milliseconds

The core of the intelligent remote control automatic loading scene for open-pit mining electric shovels lies in the system's equipped cameras that can see everything and transmit data in real time. At the coal mining site, a 'big guy' 

like an electric shovel weighs nearly a hundred tons of material per bucket. The cycle of 'digging unloading digging' only takes 30 seconds, "Yue Haifeng said. To make the 'big guy' work fast, it needs to 'see' accurately and 'see' everything.

 This includes two aspects: one is to give the "big guy" a 180 degree field of view like the human eye, because the working angle of a single camera is only 90 degrees; The second is to ensure that the data transmission time is controlled 

within 140 milliseconds. Any slight delay in homework instructions poses incalculable risks, "explained Yue Haifeng.

140 milliseconds, just the blink of an eye. In this short period of time, the data collected by the forklift's camera needs to be processed and restored to the effect visible to the human eye, and transmitted back to the remote control room. 

Yue Haifeng said that in order to achieve this goal, Yue Haifeng and his team installed multiple cameras and sensors on the electric shovel, and widely applied advanced technologies such as millimeter wave radar and image recognition.

In addition, the intelligent remote control and automatic loading scenario of open-pit mine electric shovels can achieve vehicle shovel collaborative intelligent control. The reporter saw at the homework site that the ground dispatch system 

remotely sends instructions to the vehicle mounted system. After receiving the instructions, the vehicle mounted system automatically plans the path based on the target location, and real-time plans the optimal working route to control the

 vehicle to load in the loading area. The system has functions such as vehicle shovel collaboration, safe vehicle meeting, automatic obstacle avoidance, emergency takeover, etc., achieving unmanned operation throughout the entire process 

of 'loading, unloading, and stopping', "said Li Guang.

It is worth mentioning that the intelligent remote control and automatic loading scenario of open-pit mining electric shovels has also established a complete "firewall" for on-site operation vehicles. When unexpected situations occur on site, 

the system can provide real-time warnings, intelligently brake and stop the machine, and even scientifically plan disaster avoidance locations. Li Guang introduced that in the past, when an emergency occurred in the mining area, it was 

necessary to use walkie talkies or make phone calls to notify and convey information layer by layer. Sometimes, when there was poor communication signal in the mine, manual verbal notification was required. Now, this system can automatically 

analyze and make decisions to avoid disasters.