Research Status and Development Trend of Unmanned Driving Technology in Coal Mine Transportation

Unmanned driving technology has always been one focus of mine smart transportation, which is a crucial component of smart mines. However, the descriptions of both the intelligent transportation system and its industrial application are not comprehensive. In order to have an all-encompassing and comprehensive understanding of both the intelligent coal mine transportation system and its industrial application with the intelligent system, this paper summarizes and analyzes the current research status of unmanned driving technology in mines and the industrial application of current mining transportation vehicles. It begins by outlining the current research state of unmanned driving technology in mines and then assesses the advancement of unmanned driving technology. The unmanned transportation system in mines is also introduced, together with its components for perception, location, path planning, vehicle control, and multi-vehicle scheduling. In addition, each component is described in combination with the current artificial intelligent unmanned technology individually. Then, some typical categories of intelligent industrial vehicles are introduced for learning about the conditions of their actual application. There are almost four hundred coal mines that have researched unmanned driving technology, and some companies have applied the unmanned technology to realize transportation with an efficiency enhancement of 70~80%. Finally, currently existing challenges and future research are analyzed and proposed. This review may provide more comprehensive knowledge of the intelligent coal mine, accelerating the development of intelligent technology and helping to build a new management and control model.