From One Brain Controlling Multiple Machines to Ten Thousand Drones Flying in Formation: China's Manufacturing Sector Demonstrates System-Level Capabilities

Deep News
Oct 16

From October 20 to 22, along the banks of Shanghai's Huangpu River, the 2026 Sustainable Global Leaders Conference returns once again. Nobel laureates and Turing Award winners will take the stage to discuss the future and trends of technology, and the internet-famous professor who "rescues" people from anxiety and the rat race era—Macfarlane—will hold a live dialogue with Xiang Biao!

Limited seats available, first come first served. Let us journey together toward sustainability! [Click to register] In the first three quarters, China's equipment manufacturing sector contributed nearly 90% of export growth, with industrial mother machines, robotics, and precision manufacturing building irreplaceable technological barriers for foreign trade. From component OEM manufacturing to mastering the underlying motion control algorithms of industrial mother machines, and further to system-level integration capable of scheduling tens of thousands of nodes, China's foreign trade manufacturing is achieving a leap forward through technological leadership and system integration capabilities. From October 15 to 19, the 140th Canton Fair Phase One, themed "Advanced Manufacturing," was held in Guangzhou. As a "barometer" for observing China's industrial upgrading and foreign trade resilience, this session of the Canton Fair displayed a clear trajectory of technological leap.

At a press conference held by the General Administration of Customs on the 14th at the State Council Information Office, Wang Jun, spokesperson and vice minister of the General Administration of Customs, stated that in the first three quarters of this year, China's goods trade exports reached 23.2 trillion yuan, an increase of 16.4%. In the third quarter alone, the export scale exceeded 8 trillion yuan for the first time, growing by 22%. Wang Jun noted that in the first three quarters, China's equipment manufacturing sector played a prominent leading role, contributing nearly 90% of export growth; imports and exports of industrial robots, electronic components, computer parts, electrical equipment, and other products totaled over 10 trillion yuan, an increase of 58.9%, driving overall import and export growth by 11.3 percentage points. The brand influence of "Made in China" continues to rise, with exports of self-owned brands growing at 26.7%, accounting for 24.8% of total exports. In the micro-level annotations of these macro data, multiple Canton Fair exhibitors interviewed by Yicai Global stated that Chinese advanced manufacturing enterprises are proactively breaking away from homogeneous price competition, building deep moats in core control algorithms, multi-axis collaborative operations, and cutting-edge micro-optical modules.

Bottom-Level Technology Migration of "One Brain, Multiple Machines"

In the industrial automation exhibition area, the high-frequency operation of robotic arms and the roar of precision machine tool processing rise and fall in succession. As the "mother machine" of manufacturing, the global CNC system and industrial robot market was long dominated by foreign brands, but is now being reshaped by Chinese domestic enterprises. In traditional automated workshops, industrial robots often "fight alone," with each robotic arm equipped with an independent control cabinet and "brain." Once multiple devices are involved in coordinated pipeline operations, communication delays and even robotic arm collisions easily occur. However, the "one brain, multiple machines" collaborative control system displayed by Guangzhou CNC Equipment Co., Ltd. (GSK) at its booth breaks through this physical barrier: relying on a single master control system, it can act like a supreme commander, simultaneously conducting centralized scheduling and collaborative coordination of up to 18 physical axes.

"Our 'one brain, multiple machines' technology shares the same origin as our embodied intelligent equipment technology. Both rely on the company's more than 30 years of CNC system technology at the underlying level, and the algorithms can extend to high-end machine tool applications," Huang Wenxiu, Sales Director of the South China Region at Guangzhou CNC's Robot Operations Center, told Yicai Global. From high-end application scenarios such as aerospace turbine blades to the core technology of industrial mother machines, this system achieves horizontal migration of underlying technology. Huang Wenxiu stated that in the past, when industrial robots were mentioned, the names that came to mind were often the overseas "big four families." Thanks to domestic enterprises' independent breakthroughs in underlying core algorithms, China's manufacturing sector has created industrial robots with independent intellectual property rights, establishing a brand image of "diligent Chinese robots" that are sturdy, durable, efficient, and agile in the industrial automation process.

On the practical industrial application side, technological iteration directly changes the way production lines operate. Huang Wenxiu stated that from the overall perspective of manufacturing transformation and upgrading, the core value of industrial robots lies not only in "replacing humans with machines" for high-intensity repetitive tasks, but also in replacing manual labor or extremely dangerous operations. After continuous iteration, its robots have evolved from early traditional operation modes toward automation, intelligence, and embodied intelligence with autonomous decision-making capabilities. He emphasized that the entire underlying algorithm is independently developed and independently controllable. This kind of autonomous control from the bottom level of the "control brain" also resonates with the industrial upgrading of core components. Wang Jun emphasized at a previous press conference that the industrial robot industry is accelerating digital and intelligent empowerment, with exports reaching nearly 10 billion yuan in the first three quarters, an increase of 16.9%, helping trading partners with manufacturing transformation and upgrading; meanwhile, electronic component exports grew by 70%, strengthening "chips" and clearing "pulses" for global industrial and computing infrastructure.

At the upstream end of this supply chain, a relevant person in charge at Goertek Co., Ltd. introduced to Yicai Global its comprehensive manufacturing capabilities in smart hardware and the metaverse. She stated: "In addition to mature whole-machine system-level integration and manufacturing capabilities, Goertek's more core advantage lies in our ability to independently develop and supply the vast majority of underlying core precision components for VR/AR." Regarding the optical display modules (optical engines), micro-display screens, and cutting-edge optical components with the highest technical barriers in XR hardware, the person in charge further stated: "We can provide one-stop turnkey services from early-stage optical design and R&D to large-scale high-precision manufacturing. These core components and the underlying spatial perception and interaction algorithms have all achieved full-stack independent R&D and independent manufacturing."

Leap from Single-Machine Manufacturing to System Integration of Tens of Thousands in Formation

Additionally, many exhibitors at the Canton Fair demonstrated China's strong "system integration capabilities" through ultra-large-scale cluster scheduling and collaborative operations. In front of the low-altitude economy and unmanned aerial vehicle booth, the drone swarm formation technology exhibited by Shenzhen HighGreat Innovation Technology Development Co., Ltd. attracted batches of foreign buyers. From the Paris Olympics, Tokyo Olympics, Beijing Winter Olympics to CCTV Spring Festival Gala, this company, which transformed from traditional precision mold manufacturing, has accumulated cumulative shipments of over 140,000 units of its main outdoor performance models, and possesses the capability for complete drone manufacturing and precision component processing and manufacturing.

Jiang Xiaotong, Government Affairs Director of HighGreat Innovation, told Yicai Global that for outdoor high-density pattern presentation, the company launched a new lightweight model this year weighing only 249 grams, significantly lighter than the traditional 530-gram standard model. "This model can achieve an ultra-tight flight safety spacing of only 0.8 meters in the air, and the patterns assembled are very fine and beautiful," Jiang Xiaotong said. Industry analysts believe that high-density array arrangements place extremely high demands on spatial positioning accuracy and dynamic collaborative control. In the indoor formation performance niche, Jiang Xiaotong stated that HighGreat Innovation is a pioneer in this field. According to her introduction, the company is currently the first in the industry to achieve mass production of commercial indoor formation performance drones. The indoor model weighs only about 35 grams per unit, "even lighter than an ordinary egg," specifically designed for enclosed scenarios such as cafes, indoor theaters, and school auditoriums. The maximum external effective payload for a single outdoor model can reach 800 grams, not only supporting a single unit carrying up to 16 fireworks, but also hanging physical folk lanterns and luminous sky lanterns, with a whole-machine wind resistance of up to level 7 and a single-flight performance duration of up to 40 minutes.

What truly reflects "system integration capabilities" is the underlying ground station cluster control system behind the company. Jiang Xiaotong introduced that last year, the company successfully broke the world record in Liuyang, Hunan, relying on a single ground station control computer and a single control system to achieve autonomous takeoff and formation flight of nearly 16,000 drones in the same airspace. Behind this capability is the engineering experience HighGreat Innovation accumulated since 2003 in precision manufacturing OEM services for international tech giants such as Samsung, LG, and HTC; in 2014, the company underwent a comprehensive strategic transformation to devote itself to complete drone development.

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