Recently, the 5G remote excavator control upgrade project at China Shenhua’s Yanbao Energy, successfully passed a 150-hour trial operation after rigorous testing and evaluation, marking the frigid open-pit mine’s official entry into a new era of intelligent operations centered on “replacing human operators with machinery.”
The company’s mining area endures winter temperatures plunging to as low as minus 40 degrees Celsius, along with highly variable and harsh working conditions. Conventional manned excavator operations has to face extreme climatic challenges and safety hazards. In response, the mine initiated the 5G remote excavator control retrofitting project with the goal of developing a comprehensive remote excavation solution tailored to severe cold and other extreme operating environments. The project involved a full drive-by-wire intelligent conversion of the XE2000 excavator, leveraging the mine’s dedicated 5G private network to build transmission links. Low-latency transmission protocols were employed to optimize the delivery of audio, video, and control signals, with end-to-end link latency from equipment to control console strictly maintained below 150 milliseconds and command transmission latency reduced to as low as 20 milliseconds, ensuring real-time responsiveness without any perceptible delay. At the control end, three 43-inch high-definition splicing screens provide a 1:1 reproduction of the actual machine’s handling feel, while multiple video streams are transmitted synchronously with zero distortion. Combined with a high-fidelity spatial audio system, the remote operating experience is virtually indistinguishable from being physically present at the worksite.
The successful completion of this trial operation represents a significant milestone in the company’s pursuit of an “intelligent mining production” model. Beyond substantially alleviating the physical demands and safety exposure of frontline personnel operating under extreme cold and other adverse conditions, the project also furnishes China Shenhua with a replicable, scalable technological solution and invaluable practical insights to further its “replacing human workers with machinery” and accelerate the transition to mining operations with fewer personnel, and ultimately to fully unmanned ones.
