This paper analyses the development status and technical characteristics of intelligent and networked technologies for conventional ground automatic driving. This paper also analyses the coal mine environmental characteristics, such as no GNSS (global navigation satellite system) signal coverage, low roadway illumination, lots of obstructions and obstacles and ubiquitous coal dust. In the context of the above technical and environmental characteristics, this study puts forward the key technologies of automatic driving research in underground coal mine. The technologies include mobile high-precision positioning technology without GNSS, laser radar technology, underground obstacle detection technology based on millimeter wave radar, underground low illumination video real-time enhancement and characteristic matching technology, underground environment high-precision map technology, underground autonomous vehicle decision planning technology, underground autonomous vehicle control execution technology, underground 5G communication technology and C-V2X direct connection communication technology. It is pointed out that the application of automatic driving in underground coal mine has the advantages of significant demand for fewer people or no people, clear operation management subject, closed scene, fixed route, slow speed, controllable permeability, good 5G construction foundation, easy open interface, etc. The reference architecture of 'human-vehicle-roadway-cloud' coal mine underground network connected automatic driving system is constructed. The system includes underground automatic driving vehicle, roadway infrastructure, personnel, coal mine cloud/edge computing platform and coal mine automatic driving application service platform. This paper designs the coal mine automatic driving vehicle architecture, which includes perception positioning system, network connected collaborative system, vehicle-mounted operating system and vehicle basic components. This paper puts forward three stages of the evolution of the network connected automatic driving in underground coal mines. The first stage is remote control and automatic driving, which realizes the transfer of vehicle drivers from underground to ground. The second stage is the automatic driving of vehicles with emergency takeover boundary. The vehicles are mainly driven by automatic driving, and remote emergency takeover is used as a safety guarantee method. The third stage is 'human-vehicle-roadway-cloud' collaborative control, the underground autonomous vehicles operate safely, efficiently and autonomously to realize highly unmanned intelligent transportation.