Building Momentum for Chinese Modernization · A New Vision and New Journey for the 15th Five-Year Plan

Tianjin’s industrial development did not begin with light or easy tasks.

In 1866, preparations began for the Tianjin Machinery Bureau, where the production of gunpowder, ammunition and machinery emerged along the Haihe River. In 1875, the Dagu Shipyard was established on the southern bank of the Haihe, followed by the construction of ironworks, boiler plants and cast-iron factories. It was here that the first generation of shipbuilding and repair workers in northern China grew into skilled craftsmen.

Later, a group of technicians from the Machinery Bureau moved to Sanchashi, becoming the backbone of local machinery casting factories. By the 1930s, Sanchashi had developed into a major center for machinery manufacturing and cast-iron production in Tianjin and even across northern China.

More than a century of industrial development left behind far more than factories, shipyards and machinery.

Machines are ultimately put to work on production lines, exposed to complex environments and tested by time. Amid a century of glowing furnaces and the clang of iron and steel, the character of the city gradually took shape: rather than seeking short-term cleverness, it focuses on mastering the craft over many years.

This down-to-earth, resilient industrial spirit, with a willingness to tackle the toughest challenges, has been passed down from Tianjin’s modern machinery industry and has become the deepest foundation of the city’s robotics industry today.

Over the years, Tianjin has nurtured a number of “low-profile” robotics companies. They manufacture “hard-core” machines designed to enter factories, operate underwater and work at high altitudes, enduring repeated tests under complex operating conditions. On specialized tracks that may not attract much attention, these companies have spent ten or even twenty years steadily honing their expertise.

In 2025, there were 104 enterprises in Tianjin’s robotics industry chain, with total industrial output exceeding RMB 13 billion. Industrial robots accounted for more than 75% of that output. Intelligent robots have become one of Tianjin’s key emerging and future industry chains.

These robots may not always be the most eye-catching, but they consistently prove their value where they are truly

needed.

A Century of Industry: Strength Forged Through Heritage

Inside the workshop of Tianjin Chenxing Technology Co., Ltd. (ATOMROBOT), a red Delta robot moves continuously up and down.

Three robotic arms move at high speed around the end effector, picking up and placing down products again and again. Because of their resemblance to an upside-down spider, these robots are also known as “spider hands.”

Potato chips and milk pouches on food production lines, medicine boxes on pharmaceutical production lines, and battery cells on new energy production lines can all become the materials handled by these robots.

Since its establishment in 2013, the company has focused on the field of high-speed industrial robots. On actual production lines, Delta robots typically achieve operating rates of 80 to 130 picks per minute.

The machines need to be fast, but more importantly, they must maintain stability and precision during continuous high-speed operation. Over the years, ATOMROBOT has devoted substantial resources to the research and development of core technologies for high-speed industrial robots.

That expertise later found a new application.

The rapid development of new energy vehicles has driven continued expansion in the lithium battery industry. In downstream processes of lithium battery production lines, many operations require high-speed handling and precision processing. Demand from customers gradually reached ATOMROBOT.

In 2022, the company launched a SCARA robot designed for 3C electronics assembly and new energy battery stacking.

“The reason we were able to launch this product is precisely because we had already spent more than a decade building a solid technical foundation,” said Mao Xuemei, the company’s media communications manager.

“Although the mechanical structure of the machine changed, the technologies we had refined over and over did not have to be rebuilt from scratch. Existing technologies such as high-speed motion control and hardware and software architectures could all be transferred to the new product.”

Master one thing deeply first, and then let new branches grow from that depth.

Since its establishment in 2013, Deepinfar Ocean Technology Inc. has remained focused on the underwater robotics sector.

Underwater environments lack satellite positioning signals, wireless communication is restricted, and pressure, corrosion and complex water conditions impose extremely high requirements on equipment reliability.

Tian Chunjiang, head of brand and design at Deepinfar, listed the technologies the company has tackled over the years: control, navigation, communications, system design and manufacturing, underwater propulsion and energy systems, as well as robotic arms.

In the early days, the biggest challenge for the team was the thruster—the “heart” of an underwater robot. Imported products were expensive and had limited continuous operating time, while more advanced models were often unavailable for purchase.

The team decided to develop its own thrusters from scratch, gradually increasing thrust from 7 kilograms to 300 kilograms.

During high-speed operation, the thruster must also achieve instantaneous braking and reverse rotation. Tian Chunjiang described it as being “like a car traveling on a highway and suddenly having to shift into reverse.”

Some products must operate continuously for months under extreme conditions, leaving little room for failure.

Repeatedly testing a single performance and running equipment continuously for thousands of hours became routine during R&D.

Over the years, Deepinfar’s machines have entered increasingly complex environments and have participated in underwater emergency search and rescue operations as well as maritime support for crewed spacecraft return missions.

“From the very beginning until today, we have continued to invest in deep-sea technologies,” Tian Chunjiang said.

After more than a decade, what the company has accumulated is no longer simply a single type of robot, but a comprehensive underwater equipment capability that enables machines to descend deep underwater, navigate accurately, remain operational for extended periods and complete real-world tasks.

Ten Years of Refinement: True Expertise Lies Beneath the Surface

“We have 21 years of experience.”

Speaking about the competitive pressure brought by an increasing number of newcomers entering the pool-cleaning robot industry, Cen Pu, chief engineer of Tianjin Wybot Intelligent Technology Co., Ltd., summed up the company’s advantage in this one sentence.

Since its establishment in 2005, Wybot has focused exclusively on pool-cleaning robots.

Because above-ground frame pools are widely used by ordinary households in Europe and the United States, earlier cleaning machines were too heavy and difficult for users to move. Around 2009, the company began developing lightweight robots.

In 2014, it began developing cordless robots, targeting another major inconvenience: robots dragging dozens of meters of cable across the bottom of a pool often became “tangled like a twisted rope” after repeated turns.

Removing the cable brought a new set of challenges: once the robot entered the water, how could it communicate with the shore? How could it determine its own position?

Around 2023, Wybot began further integrating underwater acoustic communication, positioning and AI vision technologies into its products.

Technologies that are familiar on land face an entirely different set of challenges when brought into a swimming pool.

Sound waves repeatedly bounce off pool walls, causing signals traveling along different paths to arrive at different times. Water temperature, bubbles and pool-wall materials can all create interference. Meanwhile, vision systems must deal with rippling reflections, glare and large areas with weak visual textures.

“There was no existing experience to tell us what the signal should look like. We had no choice but to explore it ourselves,” Cen Pu said.

Reflecting on the company’s journey over the years, Fu Guilan, chairman of Tianjin Wybot Intelligent Technology Co., Ltd., summed it up in two words: innovation and perseverance.

“A technology-driven company must constantly innovate. At the same time, it must be resilient. You cannot simply run away whenever you encounter difficulties,” she said.

Wybot has continued to break through technological barriers and use its technological strength to open the door to overseas markets, all through its persistent commitment to technological innovation.

When a new product enters an overseas market, the R&D team quickly follows.

“They summarize the lessons learned, then make improvements and continue raising the bar.”

Beyond the swimming pool, Tianjin YUNSHEN Intelligent Technology Co., Ltd. has spent nearly a decade working in the skies above cities.

Chen Fangfang, the company’s director of marketing communications, recalled that when the company was founded in 2017, drone operations in the industry typically required a pilot to travel to the site for every mission: controlling takeoff and landing, changing batteries and payloads, and then handing the collected data to other personnel for processing.

“What we wanted to achieve from the very beginning was a ‘fully autonomous’ low-altitude robot,” she said.

YUNSHEN’s fully autonomous drone inspection system has been deployed in Yiling District of Yichang, Hubei Province.

On the large screen inside an integrated digital governance command center, a drone receives a forest inspection task and autonomously takes off from its airport. It flies over the forest while its onboard AI identifies abnormal targets such as smoke, fire and dead trees.

Once a problem is detected, photos, coordinates and warning information are immediately transmitted back to the command center.

“There is no pilot standing beside each drone. The command center issues the mission, and the industrial drone plans its own route, takes off, conducts the inspection and returns. When its battery is low, it finds a nearby airport and replaces the battery itself. Different missions require different sensors, and the fully automated airport installs the appropriate payload for it. Once multiple airports are deployed in a grid, an area that one drone cannot reach can be covered by another,” a command center staff member explained on site.

Chen Fangfang said the company’s original goal was to enable customers across industries to obtain mission results without having to learn how to fly a drone.

“Ideally, they should hardly even notice that a drone is there.”

Today, that vision has taken concrete shape across a growing number of urban governance scenarios.

When the Wind Rises, the Edge of the Well-Honed Blade Begins to Shine

During interviews, intelligent robotics companies widely shared the feeling that “the wind is rising.”

In 2024, “low-altitude economy” was written into China’s Government Work Report for the first time.

Chen Fangfang clearly remembers that when she traveled to different regions for exchanges that year, many local governments were still asking:

“What exactly is the low-altitude economy? How can it be implemented?”

One year later, at the Shenzhen World Drone Congress, local governments and industry customers had stopped asking “what is it?” Instead, they were asking questions based on their own needs:

“What scenarios do we have here? How exactly can we implement them?”

The change came quickly.

Yet for YUNSHEN, what the market needed was precisely what it had been developing since 2017.

The technology route the company chose at the time suddenly found a much broader stage when the low-altitude economy began to take off.

The same convergence of time and opportunity can be seen across the other companies interviewed.

After more than a decade of focusing on high-speed motion control, Chenxing encountered the rapid expansion of China’s new energy industry, with new lithium battery production processes creating demand for SCARA robots.

Deepinfar began tackling underwater propulsion, navigation, communications and robotic arms in 2013. More than a decade later, as “deep-sea technology” entered the national industrial spotlight, the equipment it had previously developed for marine data collection became a foundation for underwater artificial intelligence.

Wybot, which has spent 21 years “immersed” in swimming pools, has accumulated extensive knowledge of application scenarios, sensor data and algorithm training. As artificial intelligence technology has rapidly matured, that accumulated expertise has become the foundation for a new generation of intelligent products.

Cen Pu described the collision between years of accumulation and the opportunities of the times as “resonance.”

“On the one hand, companies that have been deeply engaged in an industry for many years have accumulated their own expertise in technology, application scenarios and the industry itself. On the other hand, China has continued to invest in artificial intelligence in recent years, while the entire technological and industrial ecosystem is maturing at an accelerated pace. When these two forces come together, they create a resonant effect,” Cen Pu said.

“The wind is rising.”

Tianjin is also pushing these deeply rooted industrial forces forward by incorporating intelligent robots into its key emerging and future industry chains.

From January to April, the output value of above-designated-size enterprises in Tianjin’s intelligent robotics industry chain increased 12.8% year on year, while value added increased 17.5%.

The support required by companies is also becoming increasingly specific.

During ATOMROBOT’s early development in Tianjin, the company received rent-free support for its facilities. When looking for upstream and downstream customers, Tianjin Economic-Technological Development Area helped establish connections and facilitate cooperation.

YUNSHEN needed extensive outdoor flight-testing scenarios. Tianjin provided testing conditions that allowed the company to repeatedly conduct takeoffs and landings, battery and payload replacement, and formation-flight verification.

When Wybot expanded its business and found that its office space was no longer sufficient, staff from the development area visited the company to understand its needs and quickly coordinated suitable facilities.

Fu Guilan said she felt the impact of this support deeply.

“For technology-driven companies competing in international markets, the chain is relatively long and there are many difficulties along the way,” she said. “When the government provides support at critical moments, it gives us the push we need to keep moving forward.”

More than a century ago, warships were built and repaired at the Dagu Shipyard, while furnaces in Sanchashi burned day and night. Cargo and machinery were transported back and forth on the Haihe River.

More than a century later, intelligent robots are once again setting out from this land—entering production lines, diving into deep water and taking to the low-altitude skies before being shipped through Tianjin Port to destinations farther afield.

Today, the industrial landscape of this city has undergone tremendous change.

Yet the character of Tianjin remains unmistakable: a willingness to spend years mastering a craft, to delve deeply into an industry, and to pursue excellence in every product.

(Reporters: Li Danyang, Lü Shen and Zhu Bin)