Leadership Appointment

Recently, Dr. Lin Qiao, the former hardware director of Ali Cainiao Network ET Laboratory, officially joined EACON Mining Technology as a partner in April of this year and is now serving as the Vice President of System Engineering. Prior to this, Lin Qiao obtained his PhD from Zhejiang University in 2011. In 2015, he co-founded Luobu Technology and served as its CTO. In October 2017, he became the head of hardware at the ET Lab of the autonomous driving department established by Ali Cainiao Network.

Switching from a logistics track with a market size of trillions to a mining track with a scale of tens of billions is a significant career change and an adventure that required extensive research. In Lin Qiao’s view, autonomous driving for mining is undoubtedly the most promising field in the autonomous driving industry in the next few years. Switching from large internet companies to start-ups, and from the remote public road scene to the low-speed limited scene that is about to be commercialised, has become a common career advancement path for engineers at companies like BAT. Lin Qiao left Ali to join EACON and transitioned from a lower level position to becoming a partner and vice president of a start-up company – a clear promotion. In addition to Lin Qiao, EACON has also recruited senior engineers from Baidu and Tencent.

EACON's Rapid Technology Advancement

Established in May 2018, EACON has made rapid progress in the research and development of autonomous technology for mining vehicles over the past two years. We have developed a comprehensive mining autonomous system that combines 5G network, autonomous driving technology, open-pit mining technology and stripping engineering. By the end of May, EACON had accumulated over 15,000 kilometers of unmanned driving mileage, with an autonomous haulage volume exceeding 86,000 cubic metres. These two key data points currently place EACON in the top position in the autonomous haulage industry in China. The haulage efficiency has also reached over 80% of that of manual fleets. Unlike other autonomous driving companies whose founders are mainly OEMs or technology companies, EACON's founder and CEO, Wason, is a successful serial entrepreneur born in the 1980s. Since 2012, Wason’s companies have consistently generated annual sales revenue exceeding 1 billion yuan (or $150 million USD). With his extensive experience in team management and operation, Wason invited Lin Qiao to visit the mining site multiple times for research, and Lin Qiao was ultimately impressed by the determination and fighting spirit of the EACON team, leading him to make the decision to fully commit to the autonomous mining track.

Strategic Partnerships

EACON's strategy is to focus solely on wide-body vehicles and collaborate closely with Tonly Heavy Industry, the largest OEM in the field of wide-body vehicles in China. The wide-body vehicle market has significant incremental potential, with nearly 10,000 new vehicles added each year. Tonly Heavy Industry is the first OEM in China to successfully develop off-road wide-body dump trucks, with an annual shipment volume of around 5,000 units. EACON is the largest user of by-wire wide-body vehicles (smart mining vehicles). 

In April of this year, EACON and Tonly Heavy Industry established a strategic cooperation to improve the stability and reliability of the autonomous driving system. Through pre-installation cooperation with Tonly, EACON has already deployed four unmanned wide-body vehicles in the Ordos mine. In addition to major software version updates, these vehicles are currently transporting earthwork in the mine 12 hours a day, 7 days a week. Based on the evaluation of autonomous driving operation data over the past year, on-site safety and reliability level, and comparison with labor efficiency and other factors, EACON added 8 new vehicles in June, owning the most self-operated autonomous mining vehicles in China. This measurement will accelerate the large-scale implementation of autonomous driving in domestic mine. At present, the speed of the autonomous trucks deployed by EACON does not exceed 30km/h, and the entire mine environment is relatively controllable.

Engineering for Real-World Mine Conditions

The mine scene seems simple, but it also has its own unique difficulties. For example, in the terminal delivery scenario, every time the autonomous vehicle runs the same section of road, it usually presses the same track (the best driving trajectory), so as to keep the autonomous vehicle driving in a stable state. However, on the dirt road in the mine, it is best for the vehicle to have a certain displacement every time it travels, otherwise the track will become deeper and deeper, the friction of the tires will increase, and the fuel consumption will also increase. Because of the heavy dust on the road in the mine, it is necessary to apply water to the truck on its daily haulage route. Because of the large amount of dust, the current autonomous driving perception solution of EACON is mainly based on LiDAR, millimeter wave radar and ultrasonic radar, supplemented by cameras. At a vehicle speed of 30km/h, the perception of the entire sensor solution ensures coverage of a range of 50–100 meters in front of the vehicle. As excavators and dumping operations are carried out, the loading area and dumping area will also change, which means that the high-precision map must also be kept up to date to accurately dispatch the parking position of the vehicle. In the mining operation process, the mine usually has a set of “truck dispatch system” to dispatch all operating vehicles to improve the efficiency of excavation and haulage. EACON has developed a set of “swarm commander” dispatch system for unmanned vehicles to achieve accurate vehicle dispatching. 

Lin Qiao said that for these problems, if a version of the code is written in the Beijing office and then tested by testers in the mining area, it is difficult to adjust to the optimal state. This requires engineers to locate this in the mining scene, and observe the real scene and vehicle status. Compared to many teams which only focus on technology, the founders and executives of EACON have profound entrepreneurial and business experience. While emphasising algorithms, they also attach great importance to engineering capabilities and product capabilities. The goal is to create comprehensive capabilities that can be quickly implemented, including a diverse team of algorithms, vehicle engineering and open-pit mining technology.

Global Vision

In addition to the coal mine market, EACON will also expand to other open-pit mine markets such as ferrous metals, non-ferrous metals, and quarries in the future, and will seek to go overseas at the right time. With a market size of 30 billion to 50 billion yuan per year, compared with the trillion-level estimates in Robotaxi and trunk logistics, autonomous driving in coal mines seems small, but there are only few of teams in China that are truly deep in autonomous driving in mining. EACON is the leader on this track. At this stage, EACON focuses on the open-pit coal mine scene – only realising by-wire and productisation through wide-body vehicles. Providing product-oriented solutions based on a common platform, rather than a project-based solution, is a major feature of the strategic focus of EACON. In recent years, in countries rich in mineral resources such as China and Australia, the demand for autonomous mining has been increasing year by year. Although the efficiency and cost advantages of autonomous driving in mining can only be fully reflected in mass production operations, due to the urgent need for operational safety in mines, autonomous mining companies are already in the stage of scale-up. Lin Qiao revealed that in this year, EACON will also expand the scale of unmanned driving test operations in a larger and more influential mine. In the field of autonomous mining, new domestic forces represented by companies such as EACON are gradually narrowing the gap with overseas giants. Relying on the practicability, flexible style, and the spirit of hard work, coupled with the localisation advantages, China’s new forces in unmanned driving will soon be successful.