High-Definition Mapping for Autonomous Driving in Surface Mines

The traditional mining industry confronts several challenges, including a hazardous working environment, a labor shortage, and efficiency bottlenecks. Recent advances in autonomous driving offer promising solutions to enhance efficiency and sustainability in the mining transportation process. Specifically, High-Definition (HD) maps play a pivotal role in enabling autonomous driving by providing reliable environmental prior. Notably, mining areas lack conventional road signage, feature unstructured road terrain, and exhibit semi-dynamically changing landscapes, which pose distinctive problems compared to urban environments. This paper proposes an HD map representation specially designed for surface mines, outlines a comprehensive workflow tailored to the unique challenges of surface mines, discusses the potential applications and reinforces the proposed approach with cases study in real mines. In contrast to much of the existing research, this work focuses on practical HD map applications in mines.