On October 20, the Inaugural Open-Pit Mining Intelligent Exploitation Advanced Achievements Conference and Smart Construction Forum was held in Kunming, Yunnan. Jointly organized by the editorial office of Intelligent Mine magazine—a leading domestic publication in the smart mining sector (administered by China Coal Technology & Engineering Group and hosted by the China Coal Research Institute)—along with national key laboratories, top-tier design institutes, and major energy groups, the event unveiled 12 advanced open-pit intelligent mining achievements, as well as multiple innovative teams and outstanding individuals.

Leveraging its intelligent drilling rig automation control system—an innovative technological product recognized as world-leading—DFMC secured three prestigious honors at the conference.

The Intelligent Drilling Rig Automation Control System, independently developed by the team led by Zhang Li, R&D Director of Intelligent Mining at DFMC, was honored as an Advanced Achievement in Open-Pit Mining Intelligence.

Concurrently, the DFMC Unmanned Drilling Rig Tackling Team was awarded the title of Innovative Team in Open-Pit Mining Intelligence. Furthermore, an engineer from the team was recognized as an Outstanding Individual in Open-Pit Mining Intelligence.

At the forum, Zhang Li, head of the team, introduced this advanced achievement—China's first fully autonomous drilling rig intelligent automation control system.

Addressing persistent industry pain points such as heavy dust, high noise, and severe vibrations in traditional drilling operations, as well as landslide risks that lead to high labor intensity and prominent safety hazards, Zhang Li led his team to successfully develop a comprehensive system.

This system encompasses "remote precision control, autonomous intelligent operation, all-dimensional intelligent monitoring, and closed-loop data management."

The system effectively mitigates safety hazards in drilling operations and breaks through bottlenecks in productivity improvement, delivering a replicable and scalable solution and deployment model for unmanned open-pit drilling. It resolves common challenges in new technology rollouts—such as poor system compatibility, high integration complexity, and difficult maintenance.

Currently, the system has been deployed at scale across multiple large open-pit mining sites operated by China Energy Investment Corporation, China Coal Group, SPIC (State Power Investment Corporation), and Jiangxi Copper Group.

The success of the unmanned drilling rig is a key demonstration of DFMC's integrated, clustered, and coordinated dispatching capabilities across a diverse range of surface and underground mining equipment.

The unified collaborative management and control platform can seamlessly integrate surface drills, mining trucks, underground electric locomotives, and underground load-haul-dump (LHD) machines. It centrally dispatches operational tasks, orchestrates time-sequential coordination, and enforces safety interlocks. Furthermore, the platform fully supports mixed-fleet operations, enabling both manned and unmanned equipment to operate in parallel.

The unmanned driving platform natively integrates with the company's online analysis, concentrator automation, safety monitoring, and digital twin platforms. This native interoperability significantly reduces customers' interface risks and implementation costs associated with multi-vendor systems, aligning perfectly with the industry trend toward holistic intelligent mine construction and integrated development.

The benchmark unmanned drilling project was first deployed at China Coal Pingshuo's large-scale open-pit coal mine. The on-site continuous unmanned operation was officially reported by CCTV-13 (CCTV News Channel), serving as a flagship demonstration of both China's first retrofitted unmanned autonomous blast hole drill and the broader shift toward fewer-human intelligent mining.

Furthermore, the system's overall technology has been appraised by an authoritative body as "world-leading."It has also secured a major industry award in the field of mine intelligence from the China Association of Work Safety. This dual recognition—from national media and industry authorities alike—confirms its technological sophistication, engineering practicality, and exemplary demonstration value.

This appearance marks a further industry endorsement of DFMC's unmanned drilling rig technology.

During the conference, executives from multiple companies visited the DFMC booth for in-depth discussions, exploring new directions for intelligent open-pit mining development and laying the groundwork for future collaboration.