Abstract: The explosive source of underground seismic exploration in coal mines is greatly affected by the control of pyrotechnics and cannot realize the monitoring and early warning of dynamic geological disasters in coal mining. Seismic-while-mining(SWM) is a new technique based on shearer as a seismic source underground. The paper reviewed the research status of SWM technique at home and abroad, introduced the SWM's principle and its unique advantages. According to some pilot experiments of SWM, the results show that the shearer can be used as a seismic source because it has the character of strong excitation energy, wide frequency band, safety, green economy and repeatability, etc. The records of the shearer source and the explosive source are similar to each other, but the latter has higher S/N over the former. There is an urgent need of cooperation research in the key technologies such as seismic numerical simulation and big data dynamic processing. Although SWM is still in the experimental research stage, it will become an important means such as three-dimensional dynamic geological modeling for transparent working face, monitoring and warning of mining dynamic geological disaster, etc. This technology represents the development direction of intelligent detection technology of coal mine in the future.