China has opened a coal mine with autonomous dump trucks

      Recently, a fleet of 100 Huaneng Ruichi autonomous electric mining dump trucks officially started operating at the Yimin coal mine in the Inner Mongolia Autonomous Region.

       This event was the result of a collaboration between the state-owned energy giant Huaneng Group and the technology company Huawei, which provided solutions in the field of 5G-Advanced and cloud computing.

      Technology and efficiency

       Each dump truck is capable of carrying up to 90 tons of cargo and operating at extremely low temperatures down to -40 °C.

       These machines are 20% more efficient than their traditional manually operated counterparts. The dump trucks are equipped with lithium-iron-phosphate batteries and can operate for more than five hours after one hour of charging. This provides a daily capacity of up to 21,000 cubic meters, comparable to traditional diesel counterparts, but with significantly lower energy costs.

      Security and autonomy

       The absence of a driver's cabin in these dump trucks makes it possible to eliminate the human factor and increase the level of safety at work. The intelligent control system includes collision warning functions, real-time monitoring, speeding alerts, and analysis of vehicle behavior. This significantly increases the safety and efficiency of management, allowing you to dynamically optimize routes and prevent accidents.

      Environmental benefits

       Switching to electric dump trucks can significantly reduce carbon dioxide emissions. It is estimated that 10 such electric dump trucks consume about 10 million kilowatt-hours of electricity per year, which is equivalent to a cost of 6.5 million yuan. For comparison, a similar number of diesel dump trucks consumes about 2,300 tons of fuel worth about 18 million yuan.

       The project is aimed at further expansion: by 2028, it is planned to increase the fleet to 300 autonomous dump trucks. This is in line with China's overall strategy to introduce autonomous and environmentally friendly technologies in the mining industry.

       Meanwhile, Russia is summing up the results of a three-year experiment to test self-driving cars on our roads. As it turned out, only two incidents were caused by errors in autonomous systems, while the remaining cases are related to the actions of other road users.