China Energy subsidiary Shenhua Guoneng Group succeeded in a no-load test run of unmanned mining trucks at its Dananhu No 2 coal mine in China on September 17.

The company said that all technical indicators met the requirements, and that the test run signified that its intelligent mine construction has entered a new stage.

The unmanned driving system features multi-disciplinary technology such as modern sensing technology, information fusion, wireless communication, artificial intelligence (AI), 5G technology, automatic control, environmental identification and machine learning.

Shenhua Guoneng said that the system is designed to achieve collaborative operation of the truck and excavator, automatic truck parking, automatic walking of loaded excavator, fully automatic truck walking, automatic obstacle avoidance, vehicle meeting, right-of-way management, as well as automatic scheduling and driving under the off-ramp and complex road sections.

In addition, it enables precise stopping and unloading at the dump point as well as intelligent scheduling for multiple unloading points.

The company's next step is to conduct load tests for a group of four driverless trucks entering the stope. It stated that when the driverless trucks are officially put into production, it estimates that transportation efficiency will increase by over 10%, fuel consumption will reduce by 10%, and production and operational costs at the mine will drop by approximately 10%.