Robot inspectors and green certificates power Tianjin's World Intelligence Expo

By Friday afternoon, the World Intelligence Expo 2026 in Tianjin had drawn more than 182,000 visitors to its main venue, with a further 80,000 attending the concurrent Intelligent Robot Carnival, as the city debuted a fully autonomous, green-powered grid infrastructure to support the event.

During the event's power assurance period, cutting-edge technologies such as driverless patrol vehicles, digital twin systems, panoramic monitoring platforms, and intelligent monitoring devices were employed, showcasing the city's technological prowess in maintaining the venue's operations.

In a narrow underground cable tunnel, a quadruped robot dog autonomously navigated a pre-set route, carrying an infrared dual-lens camera. It aimed the camera at a cable joint and began thermal imaging. Within 30 seconds, a set of temperature data with an accuracy of ±0.5 C was uploaded to the monitoring platform. When it encountered fireproof doors within the tunnel, the robot dog lifted a leg to step over.

"The robot dog can work continuously for over four hours, inspecting 2 kilometers of tunnels in one round," said Li Shentong from State Grid Tianjin Cable Company. "This is five times more efficient than manual inspection and could replace approximately 80 percent of conventional inspection tasks."

At a ground switching substation, a yellow wheeled inspection robot moved along the pathways. Its dual "eyes" were responsible for visible light photography and infrared thermal imaging, supplemented by a partial discharge detection sensor.

Upon reaching a switch cabinet, the robot automatically adjusted its angle to inspect critical components. It completed the inspection of eight switch cabinets in under 20 minutes and generated a detailed report, including infrared spectrograms, partial discharge curves, and temperature data, which was instantly synced with a panoramic power assurance command platform.

The Tianjin Electric Power Trading Center assisted the National Convention and Exhibition Center (Tianjin) in purchasing 800 Green Power Certificates, equivalent to 800,000 kilowatt-hours of renewable energy.

Meng Wei, deputy director of the Market Department at the Tianjin Electric Power Trading Center, said that this green electricity transaction could reduce approximately 640 tons of carbon dioxide emissions. This ensured that the event operated entirely on green energy.

In total, 248 new technologies, products, and outcomes, along with eight major industry reports, were released, covering areas such as intelligent system security, AI computing power, industrial operating systems, and hyper-intelligent integrated computing systems. Among these, 54 percent made their global or domestic debut.

Liu Zhenyi contributed to this story.