Recent developments from MINIEYE (HKG: 02431) have delivered significant positive news. On June 9th, the company announced securing a major order exceeding 130 million yuan for its L4 autonomous buses, signaling a continued acceleration in the commercialization of its L4 business and strong market validation for its product maturity and execution capabilities.
Concurrently with this substantial order win, MINIEYE is expanding its industrial footprint. On June 11th, the company formally announced a strategic partnership with Lidong Robotics (HKG: 01236). These rapid advancements in business and ecosystem development within a short timeframe underscore the company's robust resilience and substantial growth potential.
The strategic collaboration between MINIEYE and Lidong Robotics will focus on Physical AI and Embodied Intelligence, fostering deep synergy across four key dimensions: technology, product, application scenarios, and data. The board of MINIEYE believes this partnership will expedite the transition of Physical AI from research and development to large-scale deployment, broaden the application boundaries for autonomous vehicles and robots, enhance the overall competitiveness of both parties' products, and contribute to the high-quality development of the industry.
The essence of Physical AI is to enable AI to comprehend the physical laws of the real world, allowing for environmental prediction, autonomous decision-making, and dynamic interaction. This demands an exceptionally high level of coordination between algorithmic capabilities, real-world scenario data, and hardware execution. Autonomous driving and robotics share a highly homologous underlying technological foundation, each possessing distinct advantages in the realization of Physical AI.
Specifically, autonomous driving has pioneered commercialization in open-road scenarios, amassing vast amounts of dynamic traffic data, advanced decision-making algorithms, and a mature mass-production system compliant with automotive standards. Robotics, on the other hand, specializes in indoor and outdoor last-mile scenarios, excelling in spatial perception, motion execution, and hardware integration.
Against this backdrop, the powerful alliance between MINIEYE and Lidong Robotics has defined four core strategic directions for a comprehensive and systematic entry into the new Physical AI arena. These include jointly developing a foundational Physical AI technology platform, co-creating a full-scenario Physical AI product portfolio, promoting collaborative scenario deployment and commercialization, and achieving data and resource synergy, setting a new benchmark for cross-industry collaboration.
Foundations for Future Technology
Firstly, the two companies will collaborate to build a foundational Physical AI technology platform. MINIEYE brings its full-stack capabilities in end-to-end autonomous driving models, Physical AI algorithms, and closed-loop systems for massive real-world scenario data. Lidong Robotics contributes deep expertise in Physical AI spatial perception algorithms and models, embodied robot platform development and applications, and real-world data and spatial assets. Building on these strengths, they will jointly develop a world model for general physical intelligence.
Joint Development of New Products
On the product portfolio front, the partnership will pioneer two new product directions. One direction involves creating integrated hardware-software solutions to address the "last-mile" delivery scenario, amplifying the advantages of large-scale deployment and operation. The other direction leverages both parties' accumulated expertise in interactive intelligence within Physical AI to jointly develop an end-to-end multimodal interactive large language model.
This collaboration will also lead to the launch of robot products centered on delivering "emotional value," focusing on the three key characteristics of empathy, real-time interaction, and anthropomorphism. This approach aims to transcend the boundaries of traditional utilitarian robots, precisely targeting emerging, high-demand markets such as home companionship, health and wellness services, and commercial services, potentially unlocking new growth avenues for Physical AI products.
Building Showcase Projects
Furthermore, MINIEYE will leverage its mature experience and optimized systems in large-scale unmanned deployment and regular operations. Together with Lidong Robotics, they plan to prioritize the establishment of fully unmanned demonstration bases integrating "autonomous vehicles + robots" in key cities like Shenzhen and Changsha. These bases will serve as replicable and scalable models for practical deployment.
Data Synergy for Advancement
Simultaneously, the partners will engage in deep collaboration on data infrastructure for Physical AI and Embodied Intelligence. They will work to integrate data collection pipelines from vehicles and robots, establishing a unified, cross-platform closed-loop data system. They will also co-build a high-quality, comprehensive scenario library covering both indoor and outdoor, structured and unstructured environments. This data flywheel will drive continuous algorithm iteration and enhance product competitiveness.
As a leading domestic autonomous driving technology company, MINIEYE has already conducted initial validation of its Physical AI technology through its unmanned vehicles, with its XiaoZhu autonomous vehicles achieving significant success in large-scale deployment. MINIEYE will use this as a starting point to continuously expand application boundaries, steadily implementing its long-term strategy of "deepening technology, thoroughly mastering autonomous driving, and extending into all domains of embodied intelligence."
Autonomous driving serves as a pioneering application scenario for Physical AI, while the integration of unmanned vehicles and robotics represents a crucial breakthrough for the large-scale commercialization of embodied intelligence. This strategic partnership with Lidong Robotics marks a significant step for MINIEYE in strengthening its position in the Physical AI arena and exploring new growth drivers. It also provides a valuable reference for industry development through the powerful collaboration of leading enterprises.
Looking ahead, MINIEYE will remain committed to technological innovation as its core, continuously refining superior products and unlocking the synergistic value potential of unmanned vehicles and robotics. The company aims to collaborate with more partners to jointly explore the vast potential of the global Physical AI landscape, moving towards a new future characterized by human-machine collaboration and intelligent connectivity across all things.
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