The traditional mechanical coal unloading method is easy to damage the gondola car body.The damage of the gondola car seriously endangers the safety of coal transportation,and the maintenance cost of the damaged gondola car is high.Compared with the advantages and disadvantages of the traditional coal unloading method,it is proposed to use the coal unloading robot to unload the gondola car.As an emerging research field,the research of coal unloading robot at home and abroad is still in its infancy,and there is no mature technical system to learn from.Therefore,the existing research was systematically analyzed and summarized.The concept of intelligent coal unloading robot was put forward,and the key technical problems that need to be broken through were put forward according to the intelligent demand of coal unloading robot.The automatic operation framework of intelligent coal unloading robot was discussed in detail.The framework was modularized and divided into different subsystems.Different subsystems were defined and analyzed.It is emphasized that the function of automatic operation system mainly depends on key technologies.The research results show that in the future,the coal unloading of open-pit cars in small and medium-sized open-pit stations in China will develop in the direction of automation and intelligence.The intelligent coal unloading robot provides a new idea for the intelligent and automatic coal unloading of small and medium-sized open-pit stations in China.