Abstract: The authors elaborate on the technical paths and challenges of intelligent slurry shield driving, and present the key technologies and application cases of intelligent slurry shield driving. Conclusions drawn are as follows: (1) The conventional shield driving mode, featured by dominant manual operation, is gradually facing the bottleneck in safety and efficiency under extremely complex tunneling conditions. Artificial intelligence provides research paradigm and technical paths to solve the problems in the collaboration and coupling of the multiple parameters of the complex shield machines. (2) The perception of the geological environment, the mining of the basic data, the generalization of the algorithm models, and the response of the execution mechanism are the main challenges for the developing of the intelligent shield driving technologies. (3) The technical architecture for the intelligent shield driving, which is based on the "cloud platform+edge server+smart control terminal", is established; the control system for the intelligent shield driving is developed; in homogeneous ground and under specific tunneling scenarios, the intelligent algorithm-based control of multiple systems, including the shield boring system, the shield attitude control system, and the slurry circulation system, is achieved. This enables the autonomous navigation of the shield, the adaptive adjustment of the pressure in the slurry chamber and the self-regulation of the slurry circulation and muck discharging, which serves as a pioneering demonstration for the promotion of the intelligent construction in the tunneling industry. (4) The establishing of the big model for the intelligent shield driving industry, the creation of an open and friendly secondary development environment, the improvement in the automation of the key processes and in the collaboration capabilities of the multiple intelligent agents, and the breaking-through in the "data+mechanisms" modeling algorithms and in the "end to end" control technology are the key issues to achieve intelligent shield driving of higher level.

Key words: tunnel construction, slurry shield, intelligent shield driving, "cloud platform+edge server+smart control terminal" architecture, control system for intelligent shield driving, data driving