Shanghai uses unmanned shield machines, and artificial intelligence accelerates urban construction

Recently, some media reported that Shanghai has plans to introduce “artificial intelligence” unmanned shield machines in the construction of subway and highway tunnels. It is reported that the shield machine can quickly judge its own state, recognize the characteristics of the surrounding environment, and realize independent tunneling according to the established axis under specific working conditions on the basis of accurate perception of construction information, without human intervention in this process.
Shanghai plans to use unmanned shield machines, and artificial intelligence accelerates urban construction
As early as April this year, the unmanned shield machine has been successfully used in the inter-city railway tunnel from Hangzhou to Shaoxing. The world’s first intelligent shield, “Zhiyu”, developed by Tunnel Co., Ltd., relies on its “autonomous cruise” and other functions to successfully complete the operation task. The unmanned shield machine is also used in the section of Changyi Road Station of Shanghai Metro Line 14 under construction.
With the maturing of AI technology, its application scenarios are also gradually expanding. At the 2021 World AI Conference held this year, many companies demonstrated the application of AI technology in urban construction. For example, the Pangu series of large-scale pre-training models released by Huawei Cloud aims to become the intelligent infrastructure for urban digital transformation; The intelligent road test terminal Neuro released by Alibaba Cloud can automatically control traffic lights according to the road conditions.
According to public information, Shanghai Tunnel Engineering Co., Ltd. was founded in 1965, and is the first professional engineering construction unit to conduct shield tunnel test and engineering application in China. At present, the company’s business covers tunnels, rail transit, roads and bridges, construction and real estate, water conservancy, energy, underground space, major equipment, green materials, digital business, construction finance and other fields.
From the perspective of patents, according to smart bud data, Tunnel and its affiliated companies currently have more than 3900 patent applications in 126 countries/regions around the world. Among them, Shanghai Urban Construction Design and Research Institute (Group) Co., Ltd. submitted the largest number of patent applications.
On the whole, TUNNEL now has more than 2000 valid patents and more than 840 authorized invention patents. Further analysis of all patents of the company shows that the technical patent layout of Tunneling Co., Ltd. is mainly oriented to concrete, shield machine, integrated pipe gallery, prefabricated assembly, prefabricated components, tunneling machine, reinforcement cage, construction engineering and other technical fields.