Maybe it's time to revisit autonomous driving in closed scenarios.
Author | Tetsu Ta
Edit | Wen Liang
Over the past year, China's autonomous driving industry has continued to accelerate.
The release of relevant policies has made it possible to commercialize autonomous driving in open scenarios. For example, Baidu Apollo and Xiaoma Zhixing were allowed to start commercial operations of autonomous driving in Beijing.
It is worth noting that compared with open roads, the commercialization progress of closed scenes such as parks, ports and mining areas seems to be more stable and rapid, and many players have extended their commercial tentacles overseas.
Because of this, the closed scenes that were once overlooked began to attract the attention of many industry players.
A market of nearly one trillion yuan that cannot be underestimated
When the word "autonomous driving" is mentioned, the first thing people think of is often the picture of the protagonist riding on the city road in the clips of science fiction movies. Although self-driving cars are now beginning to integrate into people's daily lives, it was expected that the commercial application of self-driving cars on open roads may not be realized until 10 to 20 years later. This means that a cinematic scene may still be far away from actually becoming a reality.
However, in closed scenarios that people pay less attention to, autonomous driving has become a part of human work and even life.
Closed scenario automatic driving can be divided into six subdivision application scenarios: mining area, port, trunk logistics, airport, logistics park, and terminal logistics. Among them, the more secret mining area is one of the best application scenarios for automatic driving.
Mines, often together with keywords such as sparsely populated land and longitudinal ravines, are distributed in remote mountainous areas far from people, and often cover an area of tens of square kilometers. After years of mining and excavation, the towering mine center gradually evolved into a deep pit of tens of meters deep, and the dust after the mine truck ran over the stone road became a common sight here.
Unmanned mining card on the go
In the taupe bare mountains and sparse greenery, humans are one of the few living creatures in this desolate land, but the number of people interested in continuing to work in the mining area is decreasing due to the rising average age of miners and the overly harsh working environment.
According to the "2021 China Mining Autonomous Driving Research Report" released by Yiou, 70% of the labor force in the mine is post-60s and post-70s, and the mobility is extremely strong, generally 5 to 6 years will be transferred, while the poor working environment in remote areas such as plateau areas, the average transfer time is 3 years.
With the aging of existing workers and the reduction of the labor force brought about by the aging of the population, mine work may face a situation of no successor. Therefore, autonomous driving technology, which undertakes the mission of replacing some human work, has begun to enter people's vision.
As mentioned earlier, the characteristics of a single mine road scene and simple structure make automatic driving not restricted by the right of way, providing it with the opportunity to take the lead in landing; and the mining area has strict operational traffic norms, personnel cannot flow at will, reduce uncontrollable factors, and lower the application threshold of automatic driving.
In addition, the green mine policy released by the mainland in 2017 provides more application opportunities for autonomous driving applications.
According to the relevant report data of Yiou, the number of large mines in the mainland in 2018 was about 4324, and the proportion of large mines in China will continue to increase in the future, and most of the large mines are state-owned.
While increasingly large mines offer more possibilities for the application of autonomous driving technology, it also means that the market size is expanding.
According to the survey and calculation of Yiou Think Tank, the market size of autonomous driving technology services in China's mining areas will reach 12.9 billion yuan / year in 2030, and the scale of the autonomous driving transportation service market in China's mining areas will reach 391.2 billion yuan / year.
Prediction of autonomous driving development in China's mining areas (Source: 2021 China Mining Autonomous Driving Research Report)
For a single mine project, the introduction of autonomous driving into the vehicle will not only save the cost of the driver, but also optimize the operation efficiency of the vehicle due to technical support, thereby further improving economic benefits.
In addition, reduced personnel involvement in transport operations will reduce casualties. According to the requirements of the national regulatory policy, if a safety accident dies in the mining area, the mining area to which it belongs needs to stop production and rectify, which will cause tens of millions or even hundreds of millions of yuan of losses to the mining area involved. If the accident is serious, the mining license will be revoked and the manager will bear criminal liability.
More importantly, in order to complete the "carbon neutrality" goal as soon as possible by 2060, the mainland has been continuously promoting the smart mine model that needs to introduce technologies such as the Internet of Things, big data, artificial intelligence, and cloud computing in recent years, and the characteristics of automatic driving that integrate multiple technologies will also help the construction of smart mines.
The appropriate landing environment, active policy promotion, broad market demand and considerable economic benefits all prove that autonomous driving in mining areas is a good business that has been underestimated for a long time and cannot be ignored.
Autonomous driving in mines, commercialization accelerated
Today's autonomous driving applications in China's mining areas are showing a trend of blooming everywhere, and different types of mining areas across the country have introduced autonomous driving technology to improve production efficiency. If you look back at the development of autonomous driving in China's mining areas, all this has been achieved in just seven years.
From 2014 to 2016, it can be regarded as the initial stage of autonomous driving in China's mining areas. During this period, a number of autonomous driving companies focusing on mining scenes such as Huituo, Tage Zhixing, Bolei Technology, etc. have been established one after another, and have begun to try to develop related products. For example, Huituo and XCMG Group cooperated in the research and development of Bluestar series products including 110 tons of unmanned mining cards, and North Co., Ltd. began to get involved in the research and development of unmanned mining vehicles.
In 2016, the National Development and Reform Commission and the National Energy Administration's "Revolutionary Strategy for Energy Production and Consumption (2016-2030)" required unmanned operations in mining areas across the country. Riding on the policy east wind, the autonomous driving of mainland mining areas has officially entered the stage of technology research and development.
At the same time, at that time, a wave of mining areas that did not have safe production conditions was being completely eliminated and closed. According to the data, from 2016 to January 2021, 4800 coal mines were eliminated and closed nationwide, while the number of large mines continued to grow.
The relatively flat and wide road surface of large mines provides good landing conditions for unmanned operations, and a number of autonomous driving companies have begun to cooperate with different types of mining areas across the country during this period to apply autonomous driving technology to the actual operation of mining areas. At present, autonomous driving has been carried out trial operation in many mining areas such as baori hill mining area of national energy group, Yimin mining area of Huaneng group, Nanshan mining area of Ma'anshan of Baowu Group, and Baiyun Obo mining area.
Thanks to the promotion of less human and unmanned coal mine production processes by many companies, including in the field of autonomous driving, the production of raw coal in the mainland continued to increase between 2016 and 2020, reaching 3.90 billion tons in 2020. At the same time, the death rate is decreasing year by year. According to the data, the number of deaths in coal mines on the mainland dropped from 538 in 2016 to 225 in 2020, and the million-ton mortality rate also decreased from 0.156 to 0.058 accordingly.
Coal mine production and mortality rate in mainland China in recent years (Source: Minsheng Securities Research Institute)
The autonomous driving company went deep into the front-line work and inspected the production environment and practical needs of the mining area, laying the foundation for the technology to really go out of the laboratory and be applied to the operation and production of the mining area. After several years of technical verification, running-in, debugging and re-verification cycle, some of its products have gradually become part of the production of mining areas, realizing the commercial application of autonomous driving.
Today, autonomous driving in mining areas has formed three different business models:
First, for minecart after-installation, autonomous driving solution providers cooperate with mining companies or transport teams to carry out wire control transformation for different brands and models of mining trucks to provide unmanned vehicles for mining areas.
Second, it is the front-loading of minecarts, becoming the front-loading supplier of the main engine factory, and providing unmanned vehicles for mining enterprises and transport teams.
Third, for automatic driving, the supplier cooperates with mining companies, transport teams, and OEMs to complete the unmanned operation of the mining area, and participates in the sharing of transportation costs together.
It is worth noting that at present, only Huituo has realized all three models in China, becoming the only full-stack unmanned mine technology and operation service provider in China. And many other players in the track, such as Easy Control, are either only operators or pure technology suppliers. Although the latter is relatively lighter, for mining companies, not only does the fleet need a huge expenditure from man to no one, but also the upgrading of the overall infrastructure and equipment of the mining area is also very important, so the all-round empowerment from technology to operation is particularly important for them.
According to statistics, the total amount of commercial orders in Huituo in 2021 will reach 500 million yuan, and the repurchase rate will exceed 70%, maintaining the first place in the industry. At present, its automatic driving technology has landed in more than 30 mining areas, and has participated in nearly 80% of the smart mine unmanned projects of the top ten coal mines in the country, and the automatic driving of mining areas has thus formed a super strong market pattern.
Among them, the National Energy Group Dayan Company (Baori Hiller Energy) and Aerospace Heavy Engineering Equipment Co., Ltd. and Huituo cooperated with the world's first extremely cold 5G+ 220 tons unmanned truck marshalling operation project passed the China Coal Industry Association's industrial demonstration operation safety review and scientific and technological achievement appraisal, realizing two "world's firsts" and three "domestic firsts", filling a number of gaps in the field of unmanned mining equipment in extremely cold areas, and playing a demonstration and leading role in relevant fields in China.
Mine transportation operations, the whole can be divided into three steps of mining- transportation - platoon, each step of the automatic driving perception ability puts forward requirements. For example, when the mine truck is driving, it is necessary to monitor road objects and automatic driving in the billowing dust; when dumping waste, in addition to the need for accurate docking to prevent falling into a deep pit of tens of meters, it is also necessary to detect whether the waste is discharged. In addition, the mining area is widely distributed in extremely cold, plateau and rainy environments, which puts forward requirements for the ability of autonomous driving parts to resist cold, earthquake and moisture.
Rooted in the complex mining environment all year round, each autonomous driving player has launched its own solutions for different transportation operations in the rich practice of years and months.
Among them, professor Wang Feiyue, who has more than 30 years of research experience in the field of intelligent control, independently developed a set of parallel mine operating system under the "ACP parallel theory". This is the world's only all-model, the only multi-mine, all-scenario adaptation of the smart mine operation platform. Huituo, together with Shaanxi Coal Group Xiaobaodang Coal Mine and China Telecom last year, jointly built a 5G+ smart well mining area that passed the acceptance of the Shaanxi Provincial Department of Industry and Information Technology, making it the only company in China to provide solutions for both open-pit mine unmanned and well unmanned transportation scenarios, which reflects its technical strength to a certain extent.
The nearly 300 million yuan C round of financing recently announced by Huituo also proves that its technical strength and commercialization ability have been recognized by the industry.
The Series C round of financing is a milestone for autonomous driving companies. If you look at the investment and financing events of autonomous driving companies in the industry, 70% of the financing rounds of autonomous driving companies are before the B round, and it is even rarer for autonomous driving players in mining areas. Announced on January 13 this year that after the completion of the C round of financing, Huituo once again set a record for the largest single financing of the mining autonomous driving track, and became the first mining autonomous driving player to announce the completion of the C round of financing.
Autonomous driving in mining areas has taken the lead in commercialization, making it a unique existence in the context of the difficulty of commercial landing of autonomous driving.
Cross-border integration, new gameplay for players in mining areas
One of the most noteworthy phenomena of autonomous driving in recent times is that autonomous driving players continue to push the boundaries and try new commercial possibilities.
Robotaxi players begin to speed up the layout, attacking closed scenes from open roads. For example, Wenyuan Zhixing announced the unmanned freight business, Xiaoma Zhixing cut into the trunk logistics scene, etc., and Baidu entered the mine track in a big way. To some extent, this shows that the closed scene has become a sweet cake, attracting more self-driving players to share the food.
Although the open scene has higher comprehensive requirements for automatic driving, entering the closed scene from the open scene does not mean that the dimension reduction is reduced, especially for mining areas.
First of all, unlike the open scenario, where autonomous driving companies need to grab fickle users through various means, the mining area is a relatively closed To B market, which needs to solve problems for the project side in order to win the trust of customers.
Secondly, the complex environment of the mining area brings many problems to the application of automatic driving, not overnight to migrate the original technology and smoothly apply, but to develop a set of automatic driving solutions suitable for mining areas. The solution of autonomous driving in the mining area comes from the accumulated project practice and rich experience of the autonomous driving company in the mining area.
Take, for example, the retrofitting of mining trucks. A mining truck is often worth 20 million yuan to 30 million yuan, the cost of a single vehicle is extremely high, and the automatic driving company must complete the transformation of the mining truck without affecting the normal production of the mining area. This places extremely high demands on the technology of autonomous driving companies and the perception of the structure of the model. In addition, after the modification, it also involves adjustment, technical verification, running-in and other links, and the entire transformation cycle is long, which directly increases the testing and operating costs of the autonomous driving company.
Even if the transformation of a certain brand model is completed, if the cross-border players from the open scene decide to work in this field for a long time, they still need to complete the adaptation of the wire control transformation of dozens of mainstream brand models in the market in order to obtain as many project opportunities as possible.
The project acquisition of the mining area is a scramble.
The mining industry is related to the national economy and people's livelihood, and can be said to be one of the lifeblood of the national economy, with the characteristics of politics, public welfare and safety, with state-owned enterprises as the main force. They have extremely high requirements for autonomous driving companies and technologies, and among the existing autonomous driving players in mining areas, Huituo, as a "national team" technology enterprise incubated by the Chinese Academy of Sciences, has a more trust advantage than other companies.
In addition, the original players have passed the technical verification and run-in of the project side in the past few years, and obtained the vast majority of projects, leaving the project opportunities for latecomers to continue to decrease.
Therefore, autonomous driving players in mining areas have built their own moats in terms of technology and engineering market share, which is difficult to be easily shaken by outsiders.
In fact, not only are open-scene players trying to integrate the industry, but also closed-scene players, including Huituo, have relevant actions after accumulating enough technology.
It is reported that huituo relies on the successful landing experience and technology accumulation of closed mine scenarios, and from 2021 onwards, it will carry out commercial landing extension in multiple closed and semi-closed scene exhibitions such as park logistics and intelligent network construction.
In March last year, Huituo cooperated with Guizhou Aerospace Tianma Company under the Tenth Academy of Aerospace Science and Industry in the field of park logistics, based on the Yugong system developed by Tianma Logistics Vehicle as the platform and Huituo, to achieve real-time monitoring and comprehensive scheduling of logistics vehicles, and has developed unmanned logistics vehicles in the park.
At the same time, Huituo has completed the research and development and batch delivery of domain controllers, remote driving systems, V2X vehicle road perception coordination systems, wire control VCU, anti-collision systems and other products.
Based on technology, self-driving players in mining areas are pioneering new commercial possibilities.
summary
The intelligence of mining areas is not a new thing. In the 1990s, Caterpillar has deployed scanning radar systems and a large number of sensors in mines in the United States to realize the automatic driving of mining vehicles. Since then, Japan's Komatsu Corporation has also continued to try to drive its own mining vehicles.
After more than 20 years of verification, autonomous driving has been fully proven to be applied to mining areas. Due to the development of domestic autonomous driving technology a few years ago, domestic autonomous driving mining vehicles have emerged. Although the automatic driving of mining areas in the mainland started late, under the strong support of national policies and the active promotion of various enterprises, the automatic driving process of mining areas in the mainland has developed rapidly and is now consistent with the technical level of foreign countries.
Although the application of technology lags behind other countries, the huge domestic market space makes it a new blue ocean market, and a large number of mining areas in China urgently need intelligent transformation, which provides more superior market conditions for automatic driving.
In addition, mineral resources have clear restrictions on the identity of project participants because of the special attributes of their state-owned assets, while domestic autonomous driving players have the advantage of near-water buildings, which can fully play their respective technical advantages for the environment of domestic mining areas.
With the promotion of various favorable policies and the maturity of technology, the spring of autonomous driving in mining areas is coming ahead of schedule.
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