On April 11, relevant media reported on the scientific and technological innovation practices of Sany Group.
With the blessing of independent innovative fleet collaborative operation technology, the unmanned press fleet cooperates tacitly to “press the road”; the visual language model equipped on the vehicle allows the mechanical equipment to not only understand the instructions, but also understand the scene… On March 30, at the 2026 Trinity Science and Technology Festival Achievements Exhibition held in Changsha City, Hunan Province, a series of cutting-edge engineering machinery technology shows amazed visitors.
“New energy, electrification, intelligence, and unmanned technology are key technologies that will change the development of the future equipment industry. Increasing the research and development of related technologies is not a multiple-choice question for us, but a must-answer question.” Li Hongwei, vice president of Sany Group and director of the R&D Management Headquarters, said that in the future, the group will develop into a robot company native to artificial intelligence (AI).
In 2019, Sany Group launched a comprehensive digital transformation and built the Changsha No. 18 Smart Lighthouse Factory, an industry benchmark.
By the end of 2025, the company has built three world-class lighthouse factories and dozens of smart factories around the world, and has built the first 5G fully connected factory in the equipment manufacturing industry.
However, “Currently achievable unmanned operation still mainly relies on rule algorithms rather than data-driven. The overall collaborative efficiency of machinery has no outstanding comparative advantage compared with labor costs, and the safety and reliability of intelligent machinery also need to be improved.” Li Hongwei introduced that in recent years, SANY Group has spent more than half of its R&D investment on the reserve and development of electronic intelligent technology, especially the research and development of forward-looking and disruptive technologies that can achieve true unmanned operation.
Currently, Sany Group is gathering strength to explore new paths for the research and development of “intelligent unmanned collaboration”.
“We are actively trying to ’embrace’ all new technologies that can promote the coordinated development of intelligence and unmanned operations, so that all mechanical equipment can be interconnected and driven by data to work independently,” said Li Hongwei.
In the continuous accumulation and iteration of technology, intelligent and unmanned technologies have been fully implemented in Sany Group.
The unmanned loader independently developed by the company has successfully been put into commercial operation, and the unmanned spreader press group has set an industry record for continuous operation in high-speed construction.
The group has also successively launched remote control equipment and intelligent construction machinery, and built full-scenario intelligent solutions such as smart mines and smart ports.
In a large-scale coal mine project, Sany Intelligent Mining Technology Co., Ltd., a subsidiary of Sany Group, is using intelligent technology to empower the digital transformation of mines.
The subsidiary provides overall solutions for driverless transportation for the project, as well as building core intelligent systems such as vehicles, control, perception, and dispatch.
This is the first capacity contracting project it has tried to operate. It not only provides a replicable and scalable demonstration path for the intelligent transformation of mines, but also successfully verified the feasibility of autonomous driving commercial operations.
In addition, SANY Group is also actively exploring unmanned operations in many overseas mines, trying to shift its layout direction to solutions, digital infrastructure and full operation management systems.
In the view of Sany Group, the unmanned development of construction machinery is an inevitable trend.
However, this “big project” not only needs to solve the problem of technical implementation, but also needs to solve the problem of “economic applicability” of the technology: that is, from the laboratory to commercial application, unmanned cluster collaboration technology must have obvious cost advantages over existing manpower.
Therefore, Sany actively cooperates with artificial intelligence companies and university research institutes to jointly build a new ecological chain for unmanned construction machinery cluster collaboration, explore standard communication protocols and management models for unmanned construction machinery cluster collaboration, and try to create new business models such as “capacity contracting”.
“We are focusing on launching a new research and development paradigm for the ‘new species’ of AI-native construction machinery, promoting the development of intelligence in the direction of true unmanned operation, and evolving the ‘Sany Brain’ of construction machinery.” Li Hongwei said that SANY Group will actively challenge the research and development of technologies including algorithms and unmanned operations in complex scenes, collect and build data sets of high-quality data on the continuous working actions of construction machinery in different working conditions, and promote the establishment of industry standards.
Today, Sany Group has stepped into the global market.
The group has not only set up innovation centers in Beijing, Shanghai, Guangzhou and other places, but also continues to expand overseas: it has set up global R&D centers in Europe, the United States and other places, and built multiple manufacturing bases overseas.
At the Science and Technology Festival Achievements Exhibition, Sany Heavy Truck Jiangshan 636C ranked “C” in the electrification achievement exhibition area.
In September last year, Jiangshan 636C obtained EU vehicle type certification, becoming my country’s first long-range electric tractor to be sold in batches to Europe.
Fu Weizhong, director of Sany Group, said that in the future, Sany Group will still adhere to the development strategy of “globalization, digital intelligence, and low carbonization” and will always regard R&D and innovation as the core engine for the company’s sustainable growth.
