On December 25, 2024, at the Julong copper Mine in Changdou City, Tibet Autonomous Region, Zijin Mining, contractor 19th Bureau of China Railway Corporation and Huawei Technologies announced the results of the world’s first 5,000 m highland open pit unmanned project jointly built by the three parties.
The site displayed a 10 vehicle-strong unmanned wide body Tonly mining truck fleet monitored by two crew, which the collaborators said is handling very well the extreme cold and high winds of the Tibetan plateau. The trucks were demonstrated travelling along several kilometres of rugged mountain haul roads, “demonstrating the adaptability and feasibility of unmanned driver technology in extreme environments.”
Under the guidance of China’s ‘dual carbon goals,’ unmanned driving is an important technology to more safely operate mines. In the guidelines for the construction of smart mines led by the Autonomous Region’s Department of Economic and Information Affairs, unmanned driving in open pit mines has been included in the standard content of 5A-class smart mines.
At present, the multi-unit unmanned vehicle fleet at the Julong copper mine is operating on a haul road section thousands of metres long, with a minimum width of 20 m and a maximum slope of 8%. It is expected that during the first quarter of 2025, unmanned operations will become routine and the overall efficiency of the trucks will reach parity with the equivalent human-driven trucks.
A statement said that the outcome of this cooperation could not have been achieved without the strong alliance and complementary nature of the three collaborating companies. In the process of exploring the application of unmanned technology in the Julong open-pit mine, Zijin Mining offers the solid and progressive operational setting and business scenario, China Railway 19th Bureau provides strong engineering and contract mining operation capability, and Huawei provides the unmanned technology. With the close cooperation of the three-company team, the Julong copper mine project began the autononous fleet development in September 2024, and it took only three months to achieve a phased demonstration of results.
The core of the unmanned technology at the Julong copper mine lies in ‘cloud network mining truck’ coordination. Based on the AI computing foundation of Huawei Cloud, it provides functions of self-driving training and iteration, intelligent operation supervision, high-precision map service, and path planning.
At the same time, the project team jointly set up a number of 5G base stations to achieve full coverage of 5G signals, so that the onboard sensors can upload signals in real time and the map data can be updated minute by minute.
To handle the highland environment, the autonomous mine trucks use multisensor fusion sensing technology to ensure stable operation around the clock, reduce the failure rate by 5%, and maintain an online operation rate of more than 99%. In order to further realise the ‘essential safety” of the mine, Huawei has also built a multidimensional safety protection system.
For example, during night operations, the vehicle can maintain the set speed and operate steadily. It also reduces the involvement of personnel at all stages of mining, transportation and waste dumping to reduce safety risks at the site.
At the same time, the intelligent scheduling system optimises the operation process, reducing the amount of road maintenance and vehicle maintenance, and reducing the consumption of fuel and tyres. Compared to the traditional manned truck fleet model, two groups of 10 unmanned mining trucks Huawei says can save about 6 million yuan in cost each year which equates to over US$827,000.
In the future, Zijin Mining, China Railway 19th Bureau and Huawei say they will continue to work together to innovate and optimise unmanned technology, and build Julong copper mine into a 5A level mine in the Tibet Autonomous Region, and one which will set an industry demonstration benchmark, helping to outline a blueprint of the future intelligent mine.
