【AICC Original Article】Unmanned Sanitation Boosts Efficiency, Hefei Optimizes Urban Governance

Over the past two years, Hefei has steadily rolled out intelligent sanitation solutions across the city. Leveraging local scientific and innovative resources, the city has piloted diverse new sanitation technologies in districts including Xinzhan, Shushan, Economic & Technological Development Zone and Binhu, shifting urban cleaning from extensive manual labor to a new model featuring human-machine collaboration and digital management at a faster pace.

In line with Anhui’s push for smart city development and manufacturing transformation and upgrading, Xinzhan High-tech Zone in Hefei has teamed up with leading local sanitation firm Jinlv Environment Technology Co., Ltd. (hereinafter referred to as Jinlv Environment). Centering on smart manufacturing and driverless sanitation trials, the zone keeps advancing digital transformation of local sanitation systems and spurs the province’s sanitation sector to shift from conventional manual operations to intensive and intelligent management.

Smart Factories plus Cloud Platforms: Reliable Safeguard for Urban Sanitation

Inside the sanitation equipment welding workshop, world-leading industrial robots equipped with laser positioning technology carry out precise operations. Supported by flexible positioning tooling, the production line is capable of manufacturing products of various specifications on one single production track.

"Full-process digital monitoring covering laser blanking through robotic welding has lifted production precision by 30% and cut delivery cycles by 20%," said on-site technicians. Apart from staple products such as mobile intelligent waste compactors and large vertical garbage compression systems, the facility has rolled out innovative products including new-energy sanitation vehicles and compact blow-washing gear, delivering one-stop equipment supply and operation & maintenance services for urban and rural environmental governance.

"Previously we relied on manual patrols to spot problems, but now the cloud platform automatically dispatches work orders, doubling problem-handling efficiency!" At the demonstration center of the smart sanitation cloud platform, technical supervisors showcased the power of integrated online management. A full-coverage visual screen displays real-time operational data of field workers, vehicles and facilities. Powered by AI algorithms, footage captured by inspection drones and unmanned vehicles automatically identifies exposed rubbish, damaged facilities and other incidents to deploy nearby resources for timely settlement.

Integrating the Internet of Things, big data and AI visual recognition technologies, the platform has formed a closed-loop management system spanning front-end data collection, mid-stream resource dispatching and post-operation review. Having been deployed in projects within Xinzhan High-tech Zone, the system has shortened the average response time for local sanitation issues from two hours to under 30 minutes and reduced citizen complaint volumes by 45 percent.

Driverless Vehicles plus Robots: Ushering in a New Era of Unmanned Sanitation

At the site of the integrated sanitation project in Xinzhan High-tech Zone, mechanical sweepers work alongside unmanned devices, painting a picture of a modern industrial new town featuring clean roads, pleasant scenery and livable surroundings. "Within one hour, a single sweeping robot can finish the workload of five human cleaners," an enterprise staff member introduced. Relying on its New Energy and Chassis Research Institute founded in 2022, the firm has achieved independent R&D and production of core components including vehicle control units (VCU) and multi-functional display screens for unmanned vehicles.

In 2025, the enterprise brought in intelligent driving specialists from leading corporations including Huawei and SAIC Motor. Tailored for sanitation vehicle operation scenarios, the team developed proprietary intelligent driving algorithms featuring robust visual sensing, laser-aided depth detection, lightweight data fusion, sanitation-specific algorithm models and low-cost stable deployment. Instead of dense point cloud maps used in conventional autonomous driving, the company adopts streamlined high-precision maps that only mark curbs, lane markings and cleaning zones, updating data on pedestrians, moving cars and temporary obstacles in real time to slash mapping and maintenance costs. "Our core competitive edge lies in full-stack independent R&D covering complete vehicle development, customized algorithm adaptation and cloud-based scheduling," concluded the firm’s chief technical officer.

Source: anhuinews.com