On December 6th, 2023, the World Intelligent Manufacturing Conference opened in Nanjing, Jiangsu, China. The conference announced major achievements including the "Top 10 Technological Advancements in World Intelligent Manufacturing" and the "Top 10 Technological Advancements in Chinese Intelligent Manufacturing". Among them, Zoomlion's "Digitized Management and Industrialization of Rice Production" was selected as one of the "Top 10 Technological Advancements in Chinese Intelligent Manufacturing in 2023", showcasing its extraordinary strength and leading style in the field of agricultural machinery and agriculture.

In recent years, Zoomlion has relied on its strong R&D and manufacturing strength to actively expand its "smart agriculture + intelligent agricultural machinery" dual-wheel drive strategy, helping to consolidate the foundation of food security. Focusing on the five aspects of rice production, Zoomlion has built an intelligent and digital control platform for the entire process of rice production, covering four layers: perception layer, transmission layer, platform layer, and application layer. Through data collection and the use of decision models for soil, pests and diseases, and fertility constructed on the platform, the platform guides and schedules the operation of intelligent production equipment, transforming rice production from relying on nature to relying on intelligent equipment and scientific decision-making in a digital agricultural production model.

This digital management model fully covers the entire process of rice production, including tilling, planting, management, harvesting, and grain storage:

▶ Tilling Process: Laser leveling technology is applied to ensure the evenness of paddy fields. Through path planning, unmanned rice-field tractors are used to plow the land and thresh the crops.

▶ Planting Process: Unmanned rice transplanting technology is employed, reducing labor, fertilizer usage, and medication. It also shortens the seedling rejuvenation period, resulting in increased yield and efficiency.

▶ Management Process: Based on the data collected from the fields, a regulatory element map is generated. Utilizing a digital platform decision model, prescription maps for fertilizer application and pesticide use are created to guide intelligent agricultural machinery.

▶ Harvesting Process: With the assistance of AI-driven unmanned rice harvesters, combined with crop posture, soil conditions, weather information, and autonomous adjustment, low-loss harvesting and automatic grain unloading are achieved.

▶ Grain Storage Process: Intelligent drying control technology is utilized to improve drying efficiency and quality, achieving energy-saving drying and increasing rice milling rate.

Through this project, the implementation can reduce labor usage by 30-40% per acre, save 30% water, decrease fertilizer costs by 20-30 yuan, reduce pesticide and other agricultural inputs by approximately 20 yuan. Furthermore, each acre can increase carbon sequestration by approximately 2 tons per year, resulting in significant economic and environmental benefits.

It is reported that the selection of the two "top10" is mainly from the innovative, leading, applied, future expectations and other aspects of consideration, the relevant technical achievements in the field of intelligent manufacturing with cutting-edge, novel or substantive, demonstrative technological breakthroughs, to solve the technical difficulties in the field of intelligent manufacturing or the industry's hot issues, in the labor productivity, efficiency, return rate, the degree of contribution to the improvement of ecological and living environment, as well as the enhancement of industry innovation capacity and competitiveness have a certain impact. In 2022 World Intelligent Manufacturing Conference, Zoomlion's "Large-scale Flexible Intelligent Material Preparation Workshop" has also been selected as one of the top ten scientific and technological advances in China's intelligent manufacturing.

In the future, Zoomlion will continue to empower the development of the agricultural industry with the innovative achievements of "digitalization, intelligence and greening", continue to accelerate the application of IOT, 5G, artificial intelligence and other new technologies in the field of agricultural production, break through the bottlenecks of insufficient traditional technologies, realize lane-changing and overtaking, and promote the transformation and development of the agricultural industry into high-quality by taking practical actions, so as to provide new thinking for the scientific and technological innovation and development of the global manufacturing industry, as well as to explore new paths.