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Recently, the Ministry of Agriculture and Rural Affairs officially approved Jiangsu Jicui Intelligent Manufacturing Technology Research Institute Co., Ltd. (hereinafter referred to as “Jicui Intelligent Manufacturing”) to lead the establishment of the “Key Laboratory of Intelligent Harvesting Robots of the Ministry of Agriculture and Rural Affairs” (hereinafter referred to as the “Laboratory”), with participation from the Jiangsu Academy of Agricultural Sciences and the Nanjing Agricultural Mechanization Research Institute of the Ministry of Agriculture and Rural Affairs. The establishment of this national-level innovation platform marks not only a milestone breakthrough in the application of embodied intelligent agriculture scenarios in our city but also a microcosm of the thriving robotics industry in Nanjing in recent years, characterized by diversified application scenarios.
It is reported that the laboratory directly addresses industry pain points such as labor shortages and low harvesting efficiency in agriculture. It focuses on key technologies such as 3D visual unordered grasping, multimodal precise perception, and human-robot collaboration, aiming to build an intelligent and standardized agricultural harvesting technology system. This will enhance the intelligence and mechanization of agricultural production, empower cost reduction and efficiency improvement in the industry.
The approval of the laboratory is the fruit of complementary strengths and concerted efforts among the three parties. As the leading unit, Jicui Intelligent Manufacturing has years of experience in the field of agricultural intelligent equipment. With embodied intelligence technology at its core, it has developed an industry-leading intelligent harvesting technology system, laying a solid technical foundation for the laboratory. Leveraging its robust R&D capabilities, it has successfully developed intelligent harvesting robots for various crops, including tomatoes, strawberries, lychees, and apples.
“In terms of embodied perception, we utilize a visual language large model as the core, achieving precise output of key information about fruits and vegetables through multimodal semantic perception and cross-modal reasoning, effectively addressing common challenges such as foliage occlusion in agricultural scenarios,” said a representative from Jicui Intelligent Manufacturing. In the embodied decision-making and execution phase, the technology enables full-process harvesting of multiple types of fruits and vegetables in various complex scenarios, significantly reducing the cost of scenario adaptation.
Notably, Jicui Intelligent Manufacturing’s embodied intelligence technology has formed a diversified technical reserve, providing continuous momentum for the iterative advancement of harvesting robot technology. For example, the vehicle-arm collaboration and no-teaching technology of the embodied intelligent mobile welding robot offer technical references for the collaborative control of agricultural harvesting robots, forming an embodied intelligence technology system characterized by “one core with multiple branches.”
The co-construction unit, Jiangsu Academy of Agricultural Sciences, is a leading research institution in the field of smart agriculture. With over 20 specialized laboratories in smart agriculture, it has accumulated nearly 50 types of data indicators throughout the entire growth season of facility tomatoes, developed an integrated intelligent production and knowledge service cloud platform, and created equipment such as multi-viewpoint inspection robots for ridge-planted strawberries and autonomous greenhouse inspection robots. The Nanjing Agricultural Mechanization Research Institute of the Ministry of Agriculture and Rural Affairs has addressed industry pain points for harvesting robots by breaking through key technologies such as lightweight chassis design, multi-degree-of-freedom serial-parallel hybrid bionic robotic arms, and underactuated bionic end-effector design. It has successfully developed an open-source fruit and tea harvesting robot with fully independent intellectual property rights, achieving internationally first-class performance indicators and realizing industrialization.
The approval of the laboratory has established a higher-level “industry-university-research-application” collaborative platform for the three parties. A representative from Jicui Intelligent Manufacturing stated that, in the future, they will join hands with the Jiangsu Academy of Agricultural Sciences and the Nanjing Agricultural Mechanization Research Institute of the Ministry of Agriculture and Rural Affairs. Focusing on embodied intelligence technology as the core, they will concentrate on constructing a full-chain technology system encompassing “perception-decision-making-simulation-evolution-diagnosis” to overcome key bottlenecks such as adaptation to complex environments and compatibility with multiple crops.
In the future, the laboratory will be developed into a domestically leading R&D, transformation, and talent training base for embodied intelligent agricultural robots. It will promote the deep integration of technological innovation with agricultural production needs, using technological power to address the challenges of “labor shortage and high labor costs” in agriculture, and facilitating the upgrade of China’s agriculture from mechanization to intelligence.
The establishment of the national key laboratory is a microcosm of the thriving robotics industry in Nanjing. Under the coordinated promotion of the city’s Robotics Industry Development Office, Nanjing is leveraging its strong manufacturing foundation and scientific research resources to accelerate the deep integration of robotics technology across various industries. It is continuously exploring innovative application scenarios, resulting in a series of exemplary cases.
Currently, Nanjing has formed a product system covering scenarios such as safety and emergency response, public services, medical and elderly care, and personal consumption, showcasing an industrial trend of “multiple breakthroughs.” In the field of “robotics + cultural tourism,” Nanjing University Electronic Co., Ltd. is collaborating with Hongshan Forest Zoo on deep cooperation in new business formats for embodied intelligence in cultural tourism scenarios. The Nanjing Cultural Tourism Group is creating robotic application scenarios at Qiqiaoweng Smart Park. In the field of “robotics + inspection,” Tianchuang Robot is collaborating with Nanjing Water Group Co., Ltd. on innovative applications for water inspection scenarios. In the field of “robotics + retail,” Jicui Intelligent Manufacturing’s integrated coffee delivery robot is being deployed in parks and office buildings, and a humanoid robot smart retail space capsule has been developed.
