China’s First Coal Mine Certificated AR Glasses Put into Use in Wuhai Energy

On May 22, the underground optical waveguide AR glasses developed by Wuhai Energy Co., Ltd. under China Energy obtained the coal mine safety certificate from the National Center for Safety Standards, the first of its kind to pass the certification. The application of this equipment enables frontline workers to conduct remote failure diagnosis and treatment, remote accident rescue and relief command, intelligent risk screening, smart equipment patrolling, and remote operation instruction and training.

A worker uses AR glasses to check the drawing of feeding contactor.

In recent years, Wuhai Energy has vigorously promoted integrated development of intelligent technologies and coal mining, and optimized its production system and labor organization through equipment upgrading, blazing a new path for intelligent mining featuring “efficient production, real-time monitoring, integrated information system, precise disaster prevention, and automatic transportation”. In May 2021, the company launched a project to advance the research and application of 5G+XR technology in intelligent mining. Based on joint efforts, results of the project have been applied in underground AR and ground MR equipment at its Laoshidan Mine and coal washery.

In terms of remote collaboration, AR glasses can free hands and enable operators to achieve remote interaction from the first-person perspective, so as to break barriers arising from the epidemic prevention and safety requirements and enhance underground-ground collaboration. In terms of intelligent patrolling, the equipment can achieve high-efficiency patrolling in a visual manner and solve problems such as hidden risks, human interferences, unified standards, and untimely settlement of identified problems. In terms of remote emergency rescue commanding, the equipment can send the video recorded by frontline workers to the command center in a timely manner. Besides, it has one-key alerting function on both scheduling end and on-spot end. In the event of emergencies, it can achieve remote interaction to handle emergency accidents, thus solving problems such as untimely command in emergency rescue and relief in remote mines.