The 26th China International Industry Fair opened today. With an exhibition area of 310,000 square meters and over 3,200 exhibitors, the scale is 20.7 and 7.8 times that of the inaugural fair in 1999, respectively. Among the exhibitors, more than 400 are Fortune Global 500 companies, while specialized, refined, distinctive, and innovative enterprises, along with "little giant" firms, account for over one-third of the domestic exhibitors.
What is there to see at the CIIF? Automated production lines, industrial machine tools, robots, and embodied AI serve as the more flexible "hands" and "feet" of modern factories. During a preview visit yesterday, reporters noticed that this year, more companies are arriving with "brains," perfectly aligning with the fair's theme: Intelligent Economy, Boundless Manufacturing.
Bringing "Brains" to the Floor
At the intelligent nuclear power equipment booth, the newly released next-generation FirmSys by CGN Digital Technology Co., Ltd. has drawn significant attention. The new system features more compact cabinets yet boasts enhanced intelligence, equipping nuclear power units with a "super smart brain." This system will be applied in the demonstration project for version 2.0 of Hualong One, China's indigenous third-generation nuclear power technology, comprehensively empowering the digitalization and intelligence of the entire lifecycle of nuclear power plant operations and ensuring the safe and stable operation of the units.
As China's first independently developed nuclear-grade digital instrumentation and control system, FirmSys has made China the fourth country in the world to master this technology. Why is it called the "brain" of a nuclear power plant? Because it controls hundreds of systems, tens of thousands of devices, and 26,000 signals within the plant. It can sense unit status, monitor operational parameters, and issue execution commands, which is crucial for the safe and reliable operation of the nuclear power plant.
BlackLake Technology is also bringing a smart "industrial brain" to the fair. This year, the industrial AI company has, for the first time, brought the usually "invisible" decision-making chain from factories directly onto the exhibition floor, showcasing nine representative decision-making AI agents that cover core business segments such as quotation, engineering, scheduling, order tracking, quality inspection, warehouse management, equipment maintenance, anomaly analysis, and data processing.
Today, an increasing number of new hardware and consumer products have shorter lifecycles and faster iteration speeds, posing new requirements for the manufacturing end: high-mix, low-volume, and fast delivery. From understanding requirements and breaking down drawings and processes to formulating quotations, organizing production, and ensuring delivery, BlackLake Technology enables different AI agents to collaborate continuously around a single order. For instance, the BlackLake Engineering Agent can complete the analysis of drawing processes in about one minute with an accuracy rate of 95%.
Flexible Production
"Next-generation intelligent production places extremely high demands on takt time," said Wei Ya, a marketing staff member at Guoli Intelligent Manufacturing (Shanghai) Co., Ltd.
What is takt time? It refers to the time interval between the continuous production of two identical products. If a production line runs at a fixed speed, with the first two workstations spaced 1 meter apart and the subsequent ones 5 meters apart, the takt time will be disrupted. In such cases, maglev transfer lines that support instantaneous acceleration, deceleration, and bidirectional movement between different workstations become crucial.
At the China Intelligent Manufacturing and Advanced Manufacturing Innovation Exhibition and the Yangtze River Delta Industrial Integration Pavilion, Guoli Intelligent Manufacturing showcased its full-stack maglev transfer solutions, which have been widely applied in the lithium battery and new energy industries. The transfer line features a modular design that can be assembled in segments like building blocks, allowing for flexible and convenient layout modifications and module replacements later on. Equipped with an AI-powered intelligent monitoring and operation and maintenance system, each mover pallet is individually numbered to enable predictive fault diagnosis.
"With a maximum operating speed of up to 6 meters per second and a positioning accuracy of 0.01 millimeters, it triples the efficiency of traditional transfer lines and significantly enhances production flexibility," Wei said.
At the same booth, JAKA Robotics demonstrated how its Skill framework can be systematically implemented in factories. Wang Lei, Director of Market Communications, explained that by breaking down long-chain complex tasks into executable short-term units and embedding numerous industrial process constraints into the skill logic—such as avoiding edges for thin-walled parts, pre-separating wire harnesses, and selecting high-stress points for eccentric parts—robots can not only complete planning but also adapt to real-world process requirements.
This also elevates the flexibility level of the production line. Wang noted that in long-range, multi-step operation tests, continuous tasks taking about two minutes, such as pick-and-place, handover, and precision assembly, achieved a success rate of over 85% with only about 200 pieces of training data. Even without mature skills available, new skills can be rapidly generated through data collection and training, and users can even customize skills and orchestrate task workflows according to on-site needs, greatly accelerating deployment efficiency.
Accessible to All
In the 27-year history of the CIIF, this year's event may be the one where industry is closest to the general public.
Making its full debut under a new brand, Haizhi Intelligent Manufacturing showcased its "two major infrastructures (industrial foundation models and manufacturing networks) plus three major industrial scenarios (Refining Workshop, Agent Workbench, and Array Workshop)." On-site, reporters saw numerous creative ideas from ordinary people: flying vehicles with claws, nodding companion dolls, stylish weekly pill organizers, and even popular characters from the DIY movie "Niu Lai."
If you have an idea like "I want to build a...", simply input your product concept in the AI Creation Experience Zone, and the AI will deduce functions, scenarios, and designs to output blueprints. In the past, many ideas were "shipwrecked" at the stage of turning them into prototypes; now, with the Agent Workbench, people can check which buyers can take the order based on the blueprints, whether the price is reasonable, how the process should be arranged, and how costs are calculated.
Since 2016, the exhibition area of the CIIF's "Robot Exhibition" has consistently ranked among the top three of all sub-exhibitions. This year, domestic robots will further demonstrate their hard power in advancing into high-end scenarios. At the booth of emerging robot company Jushi Intelligent, visitors can experience controlling robots with a single voice command. By issuing tasks such as depalletizing, palletizing, and transport scheduling through natural language, the system can automatically break down workflows without writing control code, dispatching humanoid robots to complete the entire process of grasping, transporting, and stacking. In case of unexpected situations like material deviation or position changes, the system can automatically diagnose anomalies and autonomously resume operations.
In addition to its strong interactivity, Jushi Intelligent, participating in the CIIF for the second time, is making its appearance with dual booths this year, bringing the world's first embodied semantic agent system. The entire system is independently developed and controllable in China, with strong generalization capabilities, and is compatible with various heterogeneous robot platforms, including humanoid robots, robotic arms, quadruped robots, and mobile robots.