At 6 a.m., the container yard at the Meishan Port Area of Ningbo Zhoushan Port was still shrouded in thin mist. A quadruped robot dog had already begun its inspection for the day: it nimbly wove through gaps between containers, while LiDAR scanned the surrounding environment in real time and infrared cameras captured every abnormal heat source. Two hours later, a complete inspection report was automatically generated and uploaded to the dispatch center. Intelligent products are gradually becoming integrated into production and daily life. The new generation of intelligent terminals deeply integrated with AI, featuring proactive perception and autonomous learning, serves as an important vehicle for the new round of the technological industrial revolution. Recently, the 16th Smart City and Intelligent Economy Expo, themed "AI Intelligence Transformation, Wisdom Gathering for the Future," was held in Ningbo, establishing an Intelligent Product Experience Center for the first time and building an important platform for enterprises of all kinds to showcase and exchange ideas.
In recent years, Ningbo has actively seized new opportunities in artificial intelligence development and made every effort to promote digital and intelligent transformation. In the first half of this year, both the revenue of Ningbo's above-scale artificial intelligence core industry and the above-scale industrial output value of the intelligent robot industry chain grew by nearly 20% year-on-year, and the city was included in the first batch of cities selected to create national new industrialization demonstration zones.
The bottleneck in the humanoid robot industry often lies not in "whether it can be made," but in whether it can be stably mass-produced. In particular, the high debugging cost and insufficient consistency of joint modules have become key links constraining complete-machine delivery. "Our company has mass-produced 20,000 sets of humanoid robot joint modules this year, and the products have been widely applied in fields such as handling and domestic services," Wu Gaohong, general manager of Ningbo Nash Electric Drive Robot Co., Ltd., told reporters. Based on more than 10 years of technological accumulation, the company focuses on robot joint modules and drive systems, achieving stable delivery and batch implementation.
As a city of national manufacturing single champions, Ningbo possesses abundant scenario resources. "Ningbo takes scenarios as a core lever, deeply implements the 'AI+' initiative, and continuously promotes the comprehensive momentum of artificial intelligence empowering all industries. At present, 86 items of scenario supply capacity and scenario opening opportunities in the artificial intelligence field have been collected, and there are more than 200 typical 'AI+' scenarios (cases)," said Wei Jiangen, a member of the Party Leadership Group of the Ningbo Municipal Government.
"The precision of cutting piece settings is controlled within 2 millimeters, and refined operations have achieved large-scale application," said Mu Ruining, an engineer at the Zhejiang Humanoid Robot Innovation Center. They focus on the core pocket-attaching process for jeans and shirts, relying on humanoid robots to achieve full-process autonomous operation. Through visual-tactile fusion technology, they precisely perceive fabric conditions, covering the complete process of piece separation, flattening, alignment, clamping, and insertion, and achieving continuous batch production.
Wang Yidong, director of the Ningbo Municipal Bureau of Economy and Information Technology, told reporters that artificial intelligence models and industrial data are the "super brain" of manufacturing digital transformation, while embodied intelligence is the "efficient terminal" that converts intelligent decisions into physical execution. Ningbo implements the "model-data resonance" initiative to accelerate the construction of a virtuous cycle mechanism in which "data optimizes models and models feed back data." In cultivating industrial models and intelligent agents, Ningbo has cumulatively cultivated 20 vertical industrial large models, and 6 large models including Geely Xingrui have passed national filing.
Highly repetitive, high-precision, and high-risk industrial scenario tasks such as handling and sorting, cutting and grinding, and safety inspection are relatively suitable to be completed by embodied intelligent robots. In response, Ningbo is accelerating exploration of the application and implementation of embodied intelligence in manufacturing scenarios. On one hand, it strengthens the supply of complete embodied intelligent machines and actively promotes 9 complete-machine enterprises, including the Zhejiang Humanoid Robot Innovation Center and Puzhi Future, to release embodied intelligent robot products adapted to industrial scenarios; on the other hand, it cultivates embodied intelligence solution service providers, builds bridges for local intelligent manufacturing engineering service providers to cooperate with complete-machine enterprises, and promotes their transformation into embodied intelligence solution providers.
In addition, Ningbo strengthens pilot trials in key industries, designating several major industries such as petrochemicals and automotive manufacturing as the "main lines" for embodied intelligence application, while simultaneously sorting out more than 20 high-value scenarios. In port and shipping logistics, Ningbo Zhoushan Port took the lead in creating an innovative application scenario for direct vehicle-to-ship transfer, using artificial intelligence to empower key links in port collection and distribution transportation; in healthcare, Jiangfeng Biotech took the lead in building an artificial intelligence early cancer screening scenario and, relying on massive national pathology AI big data, has completed clinical application in more than 2 million cervical cancer screening cases.