After nearly a hundred tests, the world's first driverless bulldozer, jointly created by HUST and Shantui Construction Machinery Co., LTD. (Shantui), is now capable of accurately executing commands.

Zhou Cheng, the project’s technical leader, and also a professor from National Center of Technology Innovation for Digital Construction of HUST said that the research and development of the driverless bulldozer started in early 2019. The team performed system tests in the field during a cold winter when it was more than 10 degrees Celsius below zero, and they finally integrated the bulldozer’s functions including pushing, shoveling, leveling, transporting and collecting.

At the end of last month, the driverless bulldozer DH17C2U version 2.0 test was completed at a test site in Shandong Province. As the world’s first driverless bulldozer, it can accurately execute various bulldozing operation instructions, said Wu Zhangang, a director of the Intelligent Construction Research Institute of Shantui.

The world’s first steam crawler bulldozer was invented in 1904. Therefore, the transition from manned to driverless is a major breakthrough. The independent intellectual property rights of the driverless bulldozer were acknowledged as one of the 20 Hubei AI major innovation achievements (scenarios) released by the Department of Science and Technology of Hubei Province in 2021.

Experienced bulldozer operator Lu Sanhong, projected that using driverless bulldozers would result in significant labor cost savings. Zhou Cheng says, “Despite driverless bulldozers being more expensive than manned bulldozers, they can relieve people from highly repetitious work, highly polluted operating scenarios, and highly dangerous operations. In 2022, driverless bulldozers will be applied in scenarios like mining, road traffic engineering, and infrastructure construction.”

According to Yang Guangyou, a professor from the School of Mechanical Engineering at the Hubei University of Technology, driverless bulldozers will eventually replace manned ones. Besides, Zhang Hong, a Professorate Senior Engineer from CCCC Second Harbor Engineering Company Ltd., believes that driverless bulldozers will be a major trend in the development of engineering machinery in the future. As one of the top 50 construction machinery manufacturers worldwide, Shantui now has an annual production capacity of 10,000 bulldozers. The company would bring driverless bulldozers to the market in time based on technical maturity, said Jiang Yutian, president of the Intelligent Construction Research Institute of Shantui.

Written by: Zhang Zhanyu

Edited by: Hu Zhenxiang, Peng Yumeng