Changsha companies CiDi & Zoomlion collaborate on hybrid & autonomous mining truck fleet
A new fleet of 40 Zoomlion hybrid ZT160HEV trucks equipped with CiDi’s intelligent autonomous haulage system was recently successfully delivered to a coal mining operation in Xinjiang. To date the number of unmanned mining trucks deployed in the mine has exceeded 120.
CiDi says this is another milestone in the large-scale implementation of its intelligent driving technology, which it adds not only confirms the maturity and reliability of its technical solutions in extreme environments, but also demonstrates the high trust from leading customers in the industry in its autonomous driving capabilities.
Both CiDi and Zoomlion are based in Changsha – the statement said the two intelligent manufacturing benchmark enterprises have joined forces to successfully build an advanced artificial intelligence and high-end manufacturing cluster in the city.
The Zoomlion ZT160HEV was one the first wide-body dump trucks with a load capacity of 100 tons. The Zoomlion ZM-i super hybrid energy management system saves 20.9% of diesel fuel. It adopts a diesel engine direct connection and dual-motor synchronous drive scheme, increasing the speed of loaded operations uphill by 50%. Zoomlion adds that the entire vehicle boasts the strongest braking capability in the industry, with a mechanical braking torque of up to 330,000 Nm. It has a high-strength welded rigid frame with a large cross section and fully closed one-piece, so is structurally very stable. A joint braking control strategy combines mechanical and cylinder braking with liquid force and electric buffering for a high level of safety. The truck has a 570 kW Yuchai YCK16775-T300 engine and 90 kWh battery pack.
The new fleet of trucks the companies say are the result of in-depth collaboration and joint effort and they have already achieved 24/7 autonomous operation. “Behind the delivery is a head-to-head confrontation with extreme environments and technical limits, and it is also a concentrated confirmation of the core technical strength of CiDi intelligent driving.”
The mining area sees temperatures in winter drop to -30°C which can cause issues for new energy and autonomous operations as it can easily lead to sensor failure, battery performance degradation, and response delay in wire-controlled systems. At the same time, the dust generated by mining operations in this region can cause issues for smart cameras and LiDAR, which then directly affects accuracy of environmental recognition.
In response to the pain point of extreme cold, CiDi says it has upgraded the hardware configuration in a targeted manner, selected special sensors and core components for low temperature resistance, and matched this with customised heating protection modules to fundamentally solve the problem of low temperature adaptability from the hardware level and ensure that core components such as sensors and wire control systems can still operate with stability.
To address dust interference, CiDi says it relies on multiple redundant perception solutions, and integrates the complementary advantages of LiDAR, millimetre-wave radar and vision sensors, and superimposes self-developed dust filtration algorithms to effectively penetrate dust occlusion, achieve accurate identification and stable positioning of obstacles, operation routes and the surrounding environment, to it says completely solve the perception problem in bad weather.
Finally, CiDi says it has successfully realised the application of large-scale unmanned cluster operations in this mining area. The cluster scheduling system independently developed by CiDi it says can intelligently plan the optimal driving route of each mining truck based on the real-time road conditions and task priorities of the mining area, and dynamically coordinate the operation processes such as vehicle meeting, avoidance, loading and unloading, and effectively avoid congestion. At the same time, the system supports multi-vehicle cooperative grouping, and transmits operation instructions with low latency through vehicle-to-vehicle communication to ensure the consistency and safety of fleet driving.
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