XCMG (000425.SZ), China’s top construction machinery company, is among the world’s leaders in autonomous road construction technology. The company’s in-house research and development team conducts experiments and simulations, developing high-precision technologies for use in real-life scenarios by integrating 5G and artificial intelligence.
Most recently, the research and development team has been conducting trials on-site for three consecutive months. The team developed a high-precision alignment technology for the strapdown inertial navigation system of an unmanned construction roller, improving control accuracy from 20cm to 5cm. In Xinjiang’s Karamay Desert, the team worked under harsh weather conditions. After hundreds of days collecting data and conducting trials, the team managed to solve industry-wide bottleneck problems such as complex environment cluster interaction and welt compression, increasing compression efficiency by 20%.
Such efforts by the in-house research and development team are eventually translated to improvements and enhancements for XCMG’s autonomous road construction technologies. To date, the company’s second-generation unmanned cluster construction equipment has participated in 15 highway construction projects that cover 12 provinces across China, such as the Pan-Dalian Expressway, Jingxiong Expressway, reconstruction and expansion of the Beijing-Taipei Expressway, S420 Jinhu Section, Xinjiang S21 Desert Expressway, and Shanghai-Nanjing Expressway maintenance projects.
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The total construction length is 500km, the highest in the industry, and the average annual time of in-depth research conducted by technicians is 170 days. Key indicators, like vehicle positioning and acquisition accuracy, trajectory and control accuracy, and obstacle avoidance radar sensitivity, have already been recognized by national authorities for technical appraisal. The XCMG comprehensive test site’s unmanned system further boasts a trouble-free test time of 3,000 hours.
Data from key projects such as the Jingxiong Expressway, Panda Expressway, and Xinliunan Expressway revealed that for every 1km of subgrade construction, unmanned construction rollers only utilized 85% of working time and 80% of running track compared to traditional construction rollers. The unmanned construction rollers reduced fuel consumption by 15%, improving efficiency by 20%.
“Our autonomous road construction technology efforts focus on three core points: efficiency, quality, and cost. Just like the automated production line of the manufacturing industry, automated construction technology can improve standardization and achieve high-quality, high-efficiency construction solutions,” said Cui Jisheng, General Manager of XCMG Road Machinery Division.