HIGH PROFILE
trucks, in China, so our OBUs have to adapt to the
control characteristics of various truck models to
serve the different customers. In the mining areas
where wide-body dumpers are deployed, there are
usually hundreds of them in the fleet and
sometimes more than a thousand, which places
harsh requirements in terms of capacity and
reliability on the cloud-based dispatching and
control system. Finally, there are a large number of
existing mine trucks in China, so to offer
autonomous modification solutions ie retrofits for
those existing trucks has huge commercial
potential. We have already accumulated rich
engineering experience and made considerable
commercial progress in this field.
Q: What is making big mining groups in China look
at automation, is the major push a drive towards
safety or productivity or both?
YG: Both, productivity is obviously important, but
safety is probably the top concern as the Chinese
Government has issued strict legal rules that
impose stringent safety requirements on mine
management.
Q: Most of the Chinese examples of autonomous
fleets I have read about seem to be closed loop
trials - are any Chinese mines actually using
autonomous fleets in normal production yet?
LQ: The attempts at unmanned transportation of
mining vehicles in China started much later than
that in other countries. The whole industry is still in
the transformation stage from small batch trial
operations to large scale commercial
implementation. As the leading player and the first
to get commercial contracts in China, TAGE is
standing at the forefront of the industry both in
terms of technology maturity and user acceptance.
We achieved multi-fleet unmanned operation in
Bayan Obo iron mine in 2019, and by the end of
2020, all the mine trucks there will have been
modified and fully put into unmanned
transportation. For the non-rigid wide-body
TAGE Head of Marketing, Li Qingshe
dumpers, we recently signed a large contract for
200 unmanned dumpers in the Ordos coal mining
region. This project will be completed within two
years, and the first batch of 50 dumpers will be in
operation by the end of 2020. Some other
contracts are also under negotiation, so we can say
that the large scale commercial implementation
phase is already underway.
Q: I have not seen reference to autonomy being
applied at some of the largest operations like the
Zhungeer, Pingshuo coal mines or the Julong
Copper mine in Tibet, are these operations also
looking at autonomy?
LQ: TAGE’s existing customers like Baogang and
SPIC are giants in their respective fields. And the
large mining groups Zhungeer, Pingshuo and
Julong that you mentioned have also been paying
close attention to unmanned transportation. We
are communicating with them closely and they
have clearly expressed their intention to carry out
unmanned transportation projects going forward.
Q: The focus currently seems to be mining trucks.
What about blasthole drill or excavator autonomy -
is this an area you are also working on and can you
give any examples?
HL: At present, in order to ensure the high
efficiency of transportation, we have only
developed and deployed unmanned systems on
mine trucks. As for blasthole drill rigs, excavators,
bulldozers and other auxiliary equipment, although
they are still operator controlled, we have
upgraded them with vehicle terminal devices to
enable them to locate and interactively cooperate
with unmanned mine truck fleets.
Q: On the truck side is the focus mainly on larger
trucks or are you also working on projects involving
smaller trucks eg 100 t class and smaller, including
Wide-body dumpers, sometimes called tipper
trucks, are used in their 100s at many Chinese
mines, so their automation is a big part of the
unmanned projects taking place in China
the tipper non-rigid trucks that are very common in
Chinese mines?
HL: Our current solution is adaptable to both large
mine trucks and non-rigid wide-body dumpers. The
two types of truck are mainly different in terms of
vehicle control. In addition, the transportation
technical procedure is different in the mine areas
using the two types of truck, so we have to do
adaptive development to meet the specific needs
of each fleet type.
Q: How significant is your recently signed deal with
NHL to work with them to produce a new
NTE200AT truck - is this the first time your system
will have been applied to a “new” mining truck as
opposed to a retrofit?
YG: Yes and no, we started to modify NHL’s existing
mine trucks with unmanned technology via retrofit
in 2018, and have also jointly developed drive-bywire
trucks with a pre-installed unmanned system.
This year we are confident we will carry out preinstallation
with our proven solution on a large scale
with the new NTE200AT 186 t truck fleet for SPIC,
which will be a new milestone for us and for NHL.
Q: Do you see a lot of opportunities for TAGE
Idriver outside of the China market such as where
Chinese trucks are being sold (eg the new NHL
deal with Yancoal), or where you are able to work
with older or more basic truck designs such as in
India?
YG: We hope of course to work together with
Chinese mine equipment OEMs to serve their
customers both in China but also all over the
world, as the use of Chinese mining trucks in the
global market is increasing. IM
JUNE 2020 | International Mining 55