Recently, Xinhua News Agency reported a special report on "Industry University High-tech and Germany's Scharf jointly build an unmanned monorail crane to protect Anlan in the mining area." This cooperation case was selected into the "China Smart·Hui Life" case collection and was held at the 2024 World Artificial Intelligence Conference in Shanghai. Published at the Intelligence Conference.

Let’s follow the media’s lens and take a look!

Xinhua Silk Road, Beijing, June 30 (Shao Li) More than 700 meters deep underground, driverless monorail cranes drive back and forth, day and night... This has now become the norm at the Yuandian Yijing Smart Coal Mine of Anhui Huaibei Mining Group . Here, China’s AI technology marries German locomotives and becomes the guardian of the mining area Anlan.

In response to the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals, unmanned operations in high-risk underground environments have been gradually implemented in recent years. Improving miners' sense of security and happiness has become a goal for many industrial and mining companies and technology companies in China to increase their investment and work hard to tackle key problems. "AI+" has become the forefront and hot spot leading the safety production and scientific and technological development of China's mines.

As a joint research project for international cooperation in the field of unmanned driving in underground mines in China, the German Scharf monorail crane is equipped with an unmanned driving system independently developed by Hefei Gongda Hi-Tech Information Technology Co., Ltd. (hereinafter referred to as "Gongda Hi-Tech"). AI video recognition, precise positioning, radar and other technologies have realized point-to-point automatic and safe transportation, solving the industry pain points of low underground monorail crane transportation efficiency, long dispatch waiting time, and frequent accidents, becoming a joint innovation and cooperation between Chinese and German enterprises. Another example of win-win.

Pushing forward the intelligentization of mines, Chinese and German companies work together to innovate

In coal mine production, transportation is an important link. Since 2011, Yuandian Yijing Coal Mine has introduced monorail cranes from German SMT Scharf GmbH, which has a high global market share.

Monorail cranes have the characteristics of strong climbing ability, heavy load, high tunnel section space utilization, continuous non-transfer transportation in level tunnels and inclined tunnels, etc. In the past ten years, they have gradually become the first choice for auxiliary transportation systems in complex underground mine environments in China. Main means of transportation.

However, with the rapid development of artificial intelligence technology, monorail cranes that still rely on manual operations and lack intelligent systems not only face safety issues, but also suffer from long waiting times for dispatching, abnormal driving, and manual operation errors, which limit the The improvement of underground transportation efficiency is increasingly unable to meet China's practical needs for building unmanned and safe mines. It is urgent to upgrade autonomous driving technology and equipment.

Under the urgent needs of coal mining enterprises, Germany's Scharf and China University of Technology Hi-Tech reached a strategic cooperation agreement in May 2023, starting a two-way journey of deep integration of China's artificial intelligence technology and Germany's advanced monorail cranes.

Good things come hard, but there are always more solutions than difficulties

After the project was officially implemented, German Scharf engineers required that the equipment installation be completely independent of the original equipment. For example, a second generator must be additionally configured, vehicle speed acquisition must be separately configured, and communication interfaces must be electrically isolated.

Regarding Germany's very cautious attitude, Cheng Yun'an, general manager of Gongda Hi-tech, made it clear: "For the first time we cooperate, it takes a process to build trust. We can do more work and show the greatest sincerity. There are always more solutions than difficulties. The most important thing is It’s important to do such a meaningful project well.”

Since then, from equipment selection, safety standard compliance, to risk assessment and safety protection, the technical staff of Gongda Hi-Tech and German engineers conducted 2 months of testing and comparative verification. After dozens of exchanges of plans, they used actual As a result, the concerns of the German side were gradually dispelled, and the project began to move in a substantive direction.

In August 2023, technical personnel from both parties conducted technical docking on the modification work of the locomotives used in the project, and differences emerged on the selection of communication interface types.

The external communication interface of the Scharf locomotive consists of a communication module called C2W. After field testing, it was found that the wireless signal receiving distance of the C2W is limited, resulting in inaccuracies in the communication between the C2W and the on-board communication controller while the locomotive is driving. Continuous situation, which is unacceptable in unmanned locomotive control.

Xing Xing, a technical engineer at the University of Technology Hi-Tech, said: “Our suggestion to the German side is that we hope they can change the external communication interface of the locomotive to the CAN (C2C) bus interface. On the one hand, CAN communication is the current mainstream vehicle control interface method. On the other hand, CAN communication is the current mainstream vehicle control interface method. On the other hand, since CAN communication itself is wired, full-duplex, stable and reliable, and has a high transmission rate, it is very suitable for scenarios such as autonomous driving."

German engineers were initially resistant to such suggestions. As the saying goes, "No fight, no acquaintance." When both parties arranged food and accommodation at the project site, and after continuous communication and testing around on-site issues, the German side finally agreed to change to a more effective CAN (C2C) bus interface.

At this time, Scharf's general manager Haug Ruels raised a new question: after the hardware changes the communication interface, the product needs to undergo coal safety testing and certification again (a necessary qualification for products to be used underground), which may take time. Half a year or even longer.

After careful consideration, Gongda High-Tech decided to adopt a two-pronged approach. On the one hand, it will cooperate with Scharf Company in the technical docking of communication interface changes, including assisting the German side in equipment coal safety testing and certification; on the other hand, according to the original plan timetable, Technicians from Gongda Hi-Tech specially installed a set of wireless communication devices on the monorail crane to solve the unstable wireless communication situation caused by insufficient C2W receiving signals. As a transition plan, they first completed the overall system function test.

Win-win cooperation and unlimited business opportunities

After the unmanned driving system of the monorail crane was put into use, Hao Mingjing, the "master craftsman" of the monorail crane at Yuandian Yijing Coal Mine of Huaibei Mining, said happily: "When we used to operate the monorail crane, we had to work in three shifts, and the underground operations were very dusty. , especially in the summer when it is very hot and wet, and you are covered in sweat and mud every day. Now you don’t have to go down the well, you can just remotely control it from the ground. People can stop the car all the time, and the efficiency has been improved.”

After the monorail crane becomes driverless, each vehicle can save 6 people from going down the mine every day. If all the more than 300 monorail crane locomotives in Huaibei Mining become driverless, the number of people who go down the mine can be reduced by hundreds of thousands a year.

With significant social and economic benefits, the unmanned monorail crane system has quickly gained recognition in domestic and foreign markets. In April 2024, Scharf once again joined hands with Gongda Hi-Tech to realize unmanned driving of underground locomotives in the Zhangji Coal Mine in Huainan.

The Huainan Zhangji Coal Mine project site is a closed communication network that operates offline. In order to solve the problem of NTP timing required when the Scharf locomotive's on-board communication module is disconnected from the network, and does not affect the control of the vehicle, experts from the High Tech of the University of Technology have tried many methods. After repeated demonstrations and tests, Chinese experts have passed the on-board communication control The function modification of the server software finally solved this problem.

Haug Ruels said with emotion: "If we want to cooperate, we must find the strongest manufacturer in the transportation field. Facts have proved that we found the right one again this time."

Cases of Sino-German project cooperation have been fermented by the industry. Some domestic and foreign monorail crane manufacturers have come to Hefei to exchange relevant project technologies with Gongda Hi-Tech.

After realizing the unmanned monorail crane, through group collaboration among intelligent transportation equipment such as monorail cranes, ground rail locomotives, trackless rubber-tyred vehicles, ore placing machines, and beam cranes, and with the support of underground high-speed wireless communication platforms, it is possible to Realize the integrated operation of "loading-transportation-unloading" underground in mines, and transform the digitalization of mine transportation operations into intelligent and unmanned methods.

The integration of artificial intelligence and complex industrial scenarios in the mining industry will lead us towards a better, smarter and more sustainable future industry.