The world's first 5G-A open-pit mine has been implemented (recorded in China) with the operation of a hundred unmanned electric mining trucks.

Recently, a fleet of hundreds of unmanned electric mining trucks, “Huaneng Ruichi,” was put into operation at the Huaneng Yimin Coal Power Company’s Yimin Open-pit Mine in Hulunbuir City, Inner Mongolia. This is the world’s first open-pit mine to achieve large-scale collaboration of “vehicle-cloud-network” under the 5G-A network.

The transportation system has overcome technical challenges such as pure electric drive and intelligent battery swapping in high-cold environments, allowing mining trucks to operate continuously in temperatures as low as minus 40 degrees Celsius.

The mining card has a load capacity of 90 tons, is based on Huawei Cloud, can collect multi-source data, generates maps in real-time, automatically updates work points at minute intervals, plans the loading and unloading routes in advance, and accurately docks at irregular and dynamically changing spoil sites, achieving “One truck stops, the whole team knows; where to stop, know in advance.”

With the help of lidar, millimeter-wave radar, cameras, and artificial intelligence algorithms, the mining card can stably perceive in low-light environments such as snowy, sandy, and nighttime conditions with a visibility of 40 meters, automatically avoiding obstacles.

The remote control and high-definition video transmission of 100 vehicles require extremely high upstream capacity on the network. By deploying a 5G-A network, a single base station can cover 500 to 600 meters, ensuring a stable upload of 500 megabits per second and a low latency of 20 milliseconds.

Relying on the photovoltaic green electricity driven by the waste rock dump, the transportation link achieves zero carbon emissions. A hundred electric mining trucks can replace over 15,000 tons of diesel each year, reducing carbon dioxide emissions by 48,000 tons. This transportation system is jointly built by China Huaneng in collaboration with Xugong, Huawei, and other enterprises and universities.

(Source: People’s Daily)

Source: Dongfang Caifu Wang

Author: People’s Daily