Latest tech upgrading global mining industry

TIANJIN — At the exhibition booth of Unissky (Nanjing) Technology, a four-legged inspection robot moved steadily, autonomously adjusting its movements when encountering obstacles and following predefined routes. Designed for inspection work in confined and hazardous spaces such as underground mines, the robot drew the attention of many visitors to the 2026 China Mining Conference and Exhibition earlier this month.

"This product is primarily designed for confined and hazardous environments such as underground mines, and it has broad application potential in the mining sector," said Xu Tao, a solution manager at Unissky.

The global mining industry is undergoing a profound digital transformation. In recent years, China has embraced smart technologies to modernize its mining industry, with digital twins, autonomous mining and artificial intelligence-powered exploration gaining ground across operations.

China's push for smart mining is helping drive the industry into a new stage of development. The coal industry offers a glimpse of this transformation. By the end of 2025, China had 1,066 intelligent coal mines, with intelligent production capacity accounting for more than 65 percent of total coal production capacity, according to data from the China National Coal Association.

AI is being rapidly adopted across the coal industry, with applications spanning production and operations, safety management and equipment maintenance. Autonomous driving technology is also gaining ground in open-pit mines. In China, more than 4,000 autonomous mining trucks were in operation by the end of 2025, according to industry statistics.

In 2024, seven Chinese government departments jointly issued the guiding opinions on advancing the construction of intelligent mines and promoting the safe development of mines. The document calls for establishing a comprehensive system covering technology, equipment and management for smart mining by 2030, with greater integration and broader sharing of mining data.

Ren Shoumai, an official at China Geological Survey, said geological mapping is like drawing a "geological navigation map" for the subsurface mineral world.

On Sept 11, the Ministry of Natural Resources unveiled an AI-powered mineral exploration system — AI-OreSeeking, and an AI-powered geological mapping system — AI-GeoMapping, aiming to reshape geological survey workflows and provide a new technological paradigm for global mineral exploration.

AI-GeoMapping has been widely trialed on nearly 100 1:50,000-scale geological map sheets in Qinghai, Xizang, Xinjiang, Fujian and other provincial-level regions of China, and has also been promoted in Morocco, Saudi Arabia, Laos and other countries. It identifies geological bodies with overall accuracy exceeding 90 percent and improves the efficiency of data processing, integrated analysis and geological map compilation by more than 50 percent compared with traditional methods.

Experts attending the event said cutting-edge technologies such as AI, the internet of things and 5G have become increasingly integrated into the entire mining lifecycle, driving breakthroughs in areas such as smart mine development and mining machinery manufacturing.

At Huangling Mining, a subsidiary of Shaanxi Coal and Chemical Industry Group, production data at the No 1 Coal Mine are updated in milliseconds on screens at the surface dispatch and command center.

Looking ahead, experts said the industry needs to improve intelligent decision-making and intersystem coordination, build centralized data platforms to enable data sharing and accelerate the development of technologies for transparent geological information and safer, more energy-efficient power systems.

XINHUA-CHINA DAILY