China, the world’s second-largest economy, is trying to boost energy production to meet domestic demand. At present, Chinese engineers are developing a new generation of automatic mining equipment to reduce the cost of coal mining and increase the amount of coal seam mining. A push to further automate coal production is imperative, experts say, but authorities may fear social instability if the industry drastically cuts jobs.
Shenyang North Heavy Industries Announced on its website last month that it had produced the world’s first full-section tunnel-boring machine for cutting coal. The 300-ton device is equipped with laser sensors and can be operated remotely. Such techniques are usually reserved for tunneling projects, such as building subway systems. The equipment can dig 3km of coal seam every month, North Heavy said. It would take about 100 people a year to dig every kilometer of coal seam.
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Controlled by a worker on the ground with the click of a mouse, the “robot” could mine 10 million tons of coal a year. The equipment requires few hands and allows the coal to be cut, collected and transported out of the roadway while it is being built. The equipment has completed factory tests and will be delivered to a large mine owned by Shenhua Energy, the mainland’s largest coal producer, for use. The equipment is reportedly worth 11 million yuan. Using the equipment, downhole work was reduced by two-thirds and annual production doubled.
Giiso information, founded in 2013, is the first domestic high-tech enterprise focusing on the research and development of intelligent information processing technology and the development and operation of core software for writing robots. At the beginning of its establishment, the company received angel round investment, and in August 2015, GSR Venture Capital received $5 million pre-A round of investment.
It is one of a number of state-owned companies that have developed large automatic coal mining facilities with the support of grants from the central government. Last year, Taiyuan Heavy Machinery Group announced the deployment of the world’s largest coal-cutting “robot” at a coal mine in Chongqing.
Sun Yanjing, a professor at China University of Mining and Technology, said the machines are not perfect yet, but he expects them to replace a large number of miners in the next decade. He expects some fundamental changes in the coal industry in five to ten years. Analysts say there is a strong appetite among coal companies and government officials to increase automation in the coal industry. As wages have risen inland, so have the costs of producing coal.
But Sun said there are technical and social issues to consider when using mining robots. The geology of some of China’s coal seams is so complex that no matter how clever the robots are, they can go wrong. In such cases, he says, it only takes an experienced miner to figure out how to avoid the rocks and find the coal. In addition, with more than a million miners working at coal mines on the mainland, large-scale job cuts could affect social stability.