This is a robot capable of cooking rice noodles: it demonstrates its dual-arm capabilities by cooking noodles, ladling soup, adding ingredients, and seasoning in one seamless motion. While these actions appear simple, each step requires precise control. At the recently concluded 2025 World Robot Conference, multiple "Mianyang-made" robots and core component products attracted industry attention.
This is a new type of magnetic steel product: while maintaining essentially unchanged performance, it requires no addition of heavy rare earth elements and can reduce product costs by 15%-20%. Recently released by Mianyang Juxing Permanent Magnet Materials Co., Ltd., this product represents Mianyang's latest breakthrough in the magnetic materials industry.
These new products from Mianyang exemplify the city's focus on leveraging scientific and technological resources ("what we have") with industrial development capabilities ("what we can do"), grasping both the "first mile" of scientific and technological innovation achievement transformation and connecting to the "last mile" of industrial ecosystem improvement. This "dual-wheel drive" approach propels Mianyang's high-quality development.
**The First Mile: Technology Reserves, Demand Targeting, and Funding Guarantees... A Complete Transformation System in the Innovation Center**
The second phase of Mianyang Science and Technology City Innovation Center comprises more than 10 buildings, where all processes from scientific achievement transformation to production line setup before mass production can find corresponding solutions. The "starting point" of the transformation process is the Tianfu Industrial Technology Research Institute.
The term "industry" in this institute's name corresponds to its development direction, primarily focusing on the needs of building circles and strengthening chains in Mianyang's characteristic industries, while also connecting numerous research institutes and universities in Mianyang—essentially building a bridge between technology and industry.
Located in Mianyang Science and Technology City New Area, the Tianfu Industrial Technology Research Institute has attracted a cluster of technology service institutions in its vicinity, forming a complete transformation system of "achievement generation—incubation and cultivation—maturation and implementation—development and expansion," creating a favorable environment for accelerating the transformation and implementation of scientific achievements.
On August 20th, when visiting the Tianfu Industrial Technology Research Institute, Axle Research Center technical director Song Lin was discussing with team members the rigidity and cooling design of industrial machine tool "heart" spindles. The spindle is an important benchmark for measuring a country's high-end equipment manufacturing capability, particularly prominent in aerospace component processing and testing fields. The required high-speed, high-power spindles have long been monopolized by international leading companies, representing one of the core bottleneck issues constraining China's aerospace manufacturing sector.
"Our work involves strengthening cooperation with research institutions such as the Sixth Institute of China Academy of Engineering Physics. In the preliminary phase, we assembled an expert team and completed project approval in less than four months," Song Lin said, adding that they hope to launch at least two products within a year.
With technology, talent, and industrial direction secured, how to solve the funding challenge? This task falls to Mianyang Science and Technology City Science and Technology Innovation Investment Co., Ltd. (referred to as "Sci-Tech Investment") located in the same building.
Science and technology innovation investment carries high risks and high failure rates. When industrial funds and venture capital funds cannot understand the technology, they naturally dare not invest. The collaboration between Sci-Tech Investment and Tianfu Institute aims to solve this problem—Tianfu Institute is responsible for selection and transformation, while Sci-Tech Investment dares to "invest early and small," thereby achieving "dual improvement" in technology transformation and investment success, with "both parties working together as a 'weighing machine' and 'accelerator' for excellent technology and advanced industry."
Currently, Sci-Tech Investment has reached a capital scale of 10 billion yuan. Tianfu Institute focuses on seven characteristic new track industries, accelerating the formation of a collaborative mechanism with Tianfu Institute as the core and N professional research institutes as support, promoting deep integration of industrial chains with innovation chains, funding chains, and talent chains. Currently, the Magnetic Materials and Motor Industry Research Institute has been established.
Currently, in and around Mianyang Science and Technology City Innovation Center, a complete transformation system of "achievement generation-incubation and cultivation-maturation and implementation-development and expansion" has basically formed, creating a favorable environment for accelerating the transformation and implementation of scientific achievements. More scientific achievements stored in research institutes and universities are continuously being transformed into advanced products through this system.
**The Last Mile: Focusing on Industrial Chains and Clarifying Upstream and Downstream—Clear Industrial Planning on Innovation Platforms**
Technology is the source of innovation, while the foothold for development lies in industry. On August 20th, in the comprehensive performance laboratory of the Robot Intelligent Electric Joint R&D Experimental Center at Fulin Precision Industry Co., Ltd., a harmonic joint was undergoing "physical examination" on a test bench—only after passing 32 tests including peak, torque, density, efficiency, and temperature rise can it proceed to application.
The robot industry chain is extensive, making "solo development" unrealistic. Mianyang's approach is to lock onto directions and integrate research and industrial resources for concentrated breakthroughs. The province has clearly designated Mianyang as the main carrier for five key industrial chains including artificial intelligence, and as a collaborative development area for eight industrial chains including the silver economy. Based on this, Mianyang has further selected seven characteristic new track industries, forming the "587" industrial system for key industry circle building and chain strengthening.
Around each industrial chain, Mianyang has clarified key task lists and roadmaps, ensuring concentrated and aggregated efforts to achieve unified work coordination.
Taking the robot characteristic new track industry as an example—in Mianyang Science and Technology City New Area, the newly established rapid prototyping service center can significantly shorten the production cycle for complex structural components, meeting the R&D and pilot testing needs of numerous robot enterprises. Moving upstream, the magnetic materials industry, another characteristic new track industry in Mianyang, is adding "motors" as a development direction—humanoid robots use approximately 3.5 kilograms of neodymium iron boron magnetic steel per unit, mainly for drive motors, servo motors, and other fields.
For this purpose, Mianyang is also building innovation platforms to meet the demand for magnetic materials in robot joint R&D and manufacturing, thereby connecting the two industrial chains to achieve "win-win" results.
Downstream, the Sichuan Province Embodied Intelligent Robot Training Ground recently settled in Mianyang, equivalent to a robot "school" that accelerates robot technology R&D and scenario verification by creating application scenarios and collecting data, better positioning robots for "new positions."
In the Fulin Precision Industry Co., Ltd. production workshop, a nearly 170-centimeter-tall black and silver humanoid robot autonomously completes tasks such as material box handling and cargo loading/unloading while seamlessly collaborating with workers.
This new member of the industrial ecosystem is the iFlytek Robot Super Brain Platform Application Sub-center, established on August 19th. Through this platform, robots can "understand" and follow voice commands.
"We complement each other and form strong alliances, aiming to connect with numerous industrial chain partners in Mianyang to jointly explore robot interaction systems," said Liu Kewei, general manager of the platform.
By facilitating research transformation on one end and grasping industrial direction on the other, Mianyang's innovation industry continues to accelerate development. It is expected that Mianyang's robot industry output value will exceed the 3 billion yuan mark in 2025, becoming a strong growth pole on the new track. By 2027, the seven characteristic new track industries are expected to collectively achieve doubling with an output value reaching 65 billion yuan, while the five main carrier industrial chains will have a total scale exceeding 250 billion yuan, driving the city's total above-scale industrial scale to break through 500 billion yuan.
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