Guizhou has been accelerating its presence in the robotics sector, leveraging its "East Data, West Computing" hub advantage, building a distinctive industrial ecosystem from industrial handling robots to embodied intelligence innovations. Where does Guizhou's robotics industry currently stand, what differentiated advantages does it possess, and how should future strategies be mapped out? Li Shaobo, a member of the Party Committee Standing Committee and Vice President of Guizhou Institute of Technology, shared insights in a recent interview, stating that Guizhou must build upon its comparative strengths, industry trends, and its strategic positioning assigned by the state, pursuing a path of differentiated development.
What stage is Guizhou's robotics industry at currently?
Considering the overall industry status, Guizhou's robotics sector is still in an early growth phase with a relatively small base but accelerating momentum. On one hand, Guizhou boasts a solid foundation in defense special-purpose robotics, with products covering military drones, ground unmanned combat platforms, and special-purpose inspection robots. Representative products include the Yaoying series, tailored attack-reconnaissance drones, quadruped firefighting robot prototypes, and FAST maintenance robots, alongside supporting capabilities like drone countermeasure systems. At the core components level, the province can independently produce planetary roller screws are manufactured by Lorxie Smart Transmission (Guizhou) Co., Ltd., in addition to servo motors, electric servo mechanisms, harmonic reducers, and integrated joint modules. This enables coordinated development of complete drone assembly and core component manufacturing, aligning with Guizhou's role as a strategic national hinterland.
In the civilian sector, as of 2026, the Guian Robotics Innovation Industrial Park has attracted 11 robotics and supporting enterprises; the industrial carrier is gradually taking shape. Guizhou's core advantage lies in being one of the nation's few provinces to simultaneously possess three key conditions: the industrial foundation for special-purpose robots and core components manufacturing, the national computing hub resources from the East Data, West Computing project, which surpassed 175 EFlops by August 2026, and unique non-standard application scenarios in complex mountainous terrains found nowhere else in the country. The confluence of these multiple endowments gives Guizhou a development path that remains difficult for other regions to replicate.
How does the computing resource support robotics R&D, production, and application?
Leveraging the national computing hub advantage, Guizhou's computing resources provide substantial support across R&D, production, and applications. During the R&D phase, computing power primarily trains the "intelligent brains" of robots. Large-scale compute enables parallel processing, multimodal data handling, and accelerated virtual simulation, drastically shortening model iteration cycles. This facilitates rapid development of intelligent models for perception, decision-making, and execution, solidifying the foundation for intelligent robotics R&D.
In the production phase, computing power serves as a magnet attracting industry aggregation and acts as a catalyst for manufacturing efficiency. Beyond supporting data annotation and simulation, this capability has drawn multiple projects to Guizhou, including initiatives from Weimaier Technology, Zhiqing Robotics, and Galbot. These enterprises are gradually constructing a local robotics ecosystem while enhancing the efficiency of existing local manufacturers. In the application phase, computing power is driving deeper integration of robots into real industrial settings. Intelligent robots are currently deployed in sectors like energy and mining, aerospace, phosphorus and coal chemicals, mountainous agriculture, and medical education. Special-purpose robots such as mountainous patrol drones, firefighting robotic dogs, and FAST maintenance robots perform real-time on-site perception, decision-making, and operations using edge computing. Concurrently, massive operational data from these scenarios feeds back to improve algorithms, creating a virtuous cycle of application generating data, data training models, and models optimizing applications.
How can Guizhou avoid homogeneous competition and build a differentiated path?
Guizhou's approach should anchor on its comparative advantages, and we advocate development anchored in three pillars. The first is strengthening special-purpose robots and key components aligned with national strategies. The 15th Five-Year Plan period represents a critical phase for building technological strength, with unmanned confrontation models rapidly evolving. Given Guizhou's intelligent computing resources, its 92.5% mountainous and hilly terrain, and its legacy from Third Front construction in aviation, the province should focus innovation efforts on drones, anti-drone equipment, and core components to serve national imperatives and cultivate future industries.
Secondly, substantial expansion of embodied data annotation and collection facilities is essential. Given the global shortage of high-quality embodied intelligence data, Guizhou has prioritized data collection for embodied intelligence. With over 110 existing annotation enterprises and facilities like Qingyuan Huamao and Pasini's data collection factory already landed, Guizhou leverages its scenario and cost advantages to transform computing resources into industrial magnetism, attracting companies to base their datasets, model training, and R&D centers in the province. Thirdly, Guizhou must deepen the implementation of the "Artificial Intelligence+" action to deploy intelligent agents in characteristic industries. Focusing on complex mountain scenarios, and key industries, the province aims to cultivate scenarios around energy mining, aerospace, mountain agricultural machinery, and smart cultural tourism, guided by the provincial big data strategy to drive industry growth through practical applications in verticals like underground coal mining and agricultural education.
What future opportunities and challenges await Guizhou?
Embodied intelligence holds the core of future robotics revolutions, characterized by end-to-end brain solutions, real-scenario data, cloud-edge-device deployment, modular forms, and multi-agent confrontation. Guizhou is uniquely positioned for these trends. For opportunities, the province's rich real-world scenarios, mature annotation industry, and computing foundation could establish it as a high-quality data supply highland, effectively serving as the robotics industry's "data factory." Additionally, since embodied model training and simulation testing heavily rely on compute, Guizhou's resources are set to become strategic assets. Combined data and computing strengths should also attract leading enterprises, accelerating industrial agglomeration.
However, real challenges remain, including a structural shortage of high-end professionals in AI algorithms and robotics R&D. The supporting industry chain is incomplete, and the ecosystem is still nascent. Compared with the Yangtze River Delta and Pearl River Delta regions, gaps persist in industrial scale, innovation, and capital vitality. Looking ahead, Guizhou must chart a differentiated path of software-led, scenario-driven growth. By focusing on special-purpose robotics, embodied data infrastructure, and vertical applications, and by building innovation platforms through universities and industry chain enterprises, the province aims to address talent shortfalls. Planning major science and technology projects around vision-language-action models, bionic lightweight bodies, and special robots, Guizhou intends to leverage its unique resources and fully exploit real application scenarios to nurture and expand its future robotics industry.