Autonomous driving enhances safety and efficiency in open-pit mines on the Yunnan Plateau

Massive trucks carrying tons of freshly mined ore drive constantly up and down the roads surrounding one mine in Lanping County, Nujiang, located in Yunnan Province, China.

These heavy vehicles, each weighing hundreds of tons, can slow down when encountering uneven terrain and smoothly navigate steep slopes. The project site is provided by Yunnan Jinding Zinc Co., Ltd. The company's deputy mine director Jiang Xinyan said, "They are autonomous driving trucks. We already have a fleet of these trucks operating alongside remotely controlled excavators to extract minerals from the open-pit mine."  (Click here to watch the video). 

Jinding Zinc operates Asia's largest open-pit lead-zinc mine, located on the Yunnan Plateau. Whilst Technology Engineering Subsidiary of Yunnan Chihong Zn & Ge Co., Ltd. (Chihong T&E), the project operation company has teamed up with Huawei and China Mobile on the industry's first pilot of an autonomous driving solution in a plateau environment here. High-altitude, low-temperature deployments in regions with rugged terrain, such as Yunnan and Guizhou, have traditionally been extremely challenging. But many of China's metal mines are located in such areas, so the success of this project has significant implications for the entire industry.

The highest point of Lanping sits about 2,750 meters above sea level, which is not actually considered an extreme altitude on the Yunnan Plateau. But even this altitude presents a number of challenges for the engineers from Chihong T&E and Huawei.

Their project sits on a 3.2 km stretch of the mine's surface. Autonomous driving trucks weighing over 100 tons and almost 4 meters wide encounter difficulties on the rough terrain. They struggle with steep slopes, right-angle turns, scheduling for ultra-narrow two-way roads(6-meter-wide), and continuous unconnected slopes.

"The first time I drove an off-road vehicle here, I was so nervous. The road has a 9% incline, and it was so bumpy and muddy that I felt like I was going to be thrown out of the car," said Li Tianze, Huawei's resident project engineer. The cabs of mine trucks are elevated high above the ground, making sharp turns bracketed by cliffs particularly perilous.

Autonomous driving engines, the engineers insist, will be able to easily handle road sections that are challenging for human drivers. Autonomous driving trucks currently have tour trajectory planning modules that can adjust the vehicle speed based on the terrain. Engineers also have customized algorithms for specific driving scenarios like abrupt braking on uphill and downhill slopes, right-angle turns, and ultra-narrow roads. These specialized algorithms help the trucks easily handle the mine's complex environments.

Besides dealing with the difficult terrain, the engineers have decided to add a hybrid grouping capability that manages not only their autonomous driving vehicles, but also manned vehicles and remotely controlled excavators. This coordination capability should ensure stable operations across the entire road section the pilot sits on. The solution jointly proposed by Chihong T&E and Huawei uses a cloud platform to run a unified brain for the mining area that can plan paths for multiple vehicles to avoid conflicts. The planned paths include not only key coordinates but also driving speeds and expected arrival times at each key node, as well as the control modes required by different vehicles. This ensures that the vehicles are evenly distributed around the work area to avoid congestion.

Li Chenxu, an on-site engineer from Chihong T&E, has been stationed at the mine since the pilot began. He explained, "In July and August, production in the mining area often stops due to heavy rain. It not only obstructs the driver's vision but also makes the roads muddy, so we are constantly adjusting the routes we used. This made it hard to use the autonomous vehicles, since they could not adjust on their own as easily and steadily."

To address this problem, Chihong T&E and Huawei tried various ways to further optimize their solutions. For example, for the autonomous driving vehicles, they now first analyze key indicators of roads and use a 3D road condition model to simulate what the truck will have to do during travel. They then use relevant algorithms to make the vehicle control more precise and efficient. In addition, they now use the big data infrastructure and large-scale production systems to more quickly adapt to the mine's complex and ever-changing status, significantly improving the quality of their maps and making sure the maps are continuously updated.

Mining companies mainly face three big challenges in terms of safety, recruitment, and efficiency during production and operations. The remote locations and harsh conditions in mines make it extremely difficult to recruit anyone, let alone young people, and the mining industry's current workforce is aging rapidly. Mines are also struggling with low overall production volumes and inefficient transportation, while costs continue to rise. For instance, mining equipment is often not being fully utilized. Vehicle dispatch is inefficient and their fuel costs are extremely high. Truck and shovel operation is not coordinated, resulting in delayed production data updates and suboptimal mineral blending plans, ultimately leading to decreased product quality. From a business development perspective, unattended mining is a critical step forward as it addresses all three of these issues. But it is only possible through intelligent transformation.

Chihong T&E has teamed up with Huawei to tackle these challenges by utilizing Huawei's 30+ years of ICT expertise, which specifically in intelligent mining construction, thanks to its recent partnerships with leading coal mining companies like CHN Energy, Shandong Energy Group, and Shaanxi Coal and Chemical Industry Group. Since June 2024, engineers from Chihong T&E and Huawei have been testing autonomous driving applications in extreme weather conditions at Jinding Zinc's mine. Pointing to a mining truck coming at him from another direction, Li Chenxu smiled and said, "Commissioning is currently challenging, and with the rainy season approaching, we need to accelerate our plans. In two to three years, you probably will not see many people here at the mine. The whole thing will be operated from an office at the base of the mountain."

Zheng Yanchao, the project leader from Chihong T&E, sees the autonomous driving project at Jinding Zinc as just the beginning. "If our experiment succeeds, it will show that the autonomous driving technology can be widely used in similar mines on a larger scale," he explained, "There are many non-ferrous metal mines in the remote parts of China with harsh environments, not just in high-altitude areas. Intelligent transformation is a long process, but we hope to promote the implementation of these safe and efficient production technologies to benefit the mining industry." He added that planning for the next challenging high-altitude unattended mine is already underway.

Watch the case video here.