Chinese mining truck manufacturer and technology company Aerospace Heavy Industry (AHI, part of CSSG – China Sanjiang Space Group) and Shenbao Energy (part of the top Chinese coal group CEIC – China Energy Investment Corporation, the former Shenhua Group) recently organised a successful safety review and test demo for a 5G+ driverless truck project in extreme cold conditions at Shenbao’s Baorixile mining operations in the middle of the Hulunbuir grasslands of China’s Inner Mongolia Autonomous Region where temperatures can drop to as low as -50°C in winter.
Five trucks having passed the demo are now in trial operations. AHI won the bid to convert the trucks for unmanned operations in April 2020 but has managed to progress the project despite COVID-19 disruption. The 5G+ network was set up by Inner Mongolia Mobile, part of China Mobile. It built two MEC edge computing centres, six 5G base stations, and a 37.45 km optic fibre cable network around the mining area, providing large bandwidth, low latency, and high bandwidth. Vipioneers (WAYTOUS) is also understood to have been involved on the autonomous tech side of the project.
The fleet passed a review by the Chinese Association of Automation, part of SASAC (State-owned Assets Supervision and Administration Commission of the State Council). The various groups participating in the review included Hulunbuir Emergency Management Bureau, Hulunbuir Coal Supervision Bureau, Tsinghua University, China University of Mining and Technology (Beijing), Beijing Institute of Technology, University of Science and Technology Beijing, China Academy of Information and Communications Technology, National Mining Machinery Quality Supervision and Inspection Centre, National Energy Group Headquarters, and CEIC division Zhunneng Group.
The review team saw the demonstration and inspected the five NHL Joint Stock Co Ltd 220 t electric drive MT4400AC trucks on site that have been modified by CSSG-AHI for unmanned operations. The mine has completed various transformation works as scheduled and passed various debugging stages. The requirements of unmanned safe operations under the current safety regulations have been met say the partners. Overall the mine has 12 NHL MT4400AC trucks and 12 more recently delivered NHL NTE240 trucks, also electric drive.
