The industry is stuck in the situation of only issuing alarms without forming a closed loop: Bangyao Robotics adopts the dual-track approach of "inspection + disposal".

Bangyao Robot, a high-tech enterprise based in Zibo, Shandong, relies on the integrated solution of special explosion-proof AI robots, focuses on high-risk scenarios in the petrochemical industry to build a dual-track collaborative product system of "investigation and inspection + special disposal", completely solves the common industry pain point of "only alarming without closed-loop processing", and upgrades the safety operation and maintenance of high-risk chemical scenarios to a full-link disposal mode. Drawing on the 21-year frontline experience of its founding team in chemical safety, Bangyao Robot accurately targets the rigid compliance needs of 8,000 major hazard source enterprises in China. Its two main explosion-proof inspection robots have obtained authoritative certifications and achieved mass production, with applications covering four high-risk sectors.

The origin of the project stems from the 21-year safety management experience of the founding team accumulated at the frontline of a 10-billion-yuan-level chemical enterprise. In the process of following up on the implementation of work safety for years, the team found that among 33,000 chemical enterprises above designated size in China, a large number of high-risk operation links still rely on manual inspection in flammable, explosive and highly toxic areas. Most explosion-proof products on the market can only realize abnormal alarms, but cannot link subsequent disposal actions, so hidden safety hazards can never be solved in a closed loop. With the intensive introduction of rigid policies at the national level in the past three years, safety supervision in the hazardous chemical sector has shifted from "encouraging the use of intelligent equipment" to "mandatory compliance". Emergency management departments in many regions including Shandong and Zhejiang have put forward quantitative acceptance indicators that the unmanned replacement rate of external operation inspection points shall not be less than 80%. The 8,000 major hazard source enterprises constitute an accurate target market, and the rigid compliance demand is being released intensively.

The team has provided customized software services for petroleum and petrochemical clients since 2016, iterated and upgraded to a service provider of hazardous chemical IoT solutions in 2019, and officially launched the special explosion-proof robot project in 2023. Relying on the accumulation of experience in chemical scenarios over the previous decades, the team quickly completed the R&D of the principle prototype and engineering prototype, and successfully obtained the ExdbibⅡCT6Gb explosion-proof certification and IP66 protection level certification. At present, the two main models, the wheeled type and the rail-mounted type, have achieved mass production and delivery, with applications covering four high-risk tracks of chlor-alkali, coal chemical industry, fine chemical industry and hazardous chemical storage, and have won benchmark projects of listed enterprises, industry leaders and "specialized, refined and innovative" clients.

In terms of technology, the project relies on three core modules of self-developed IntelliNavi embodied spatial navigation engine, IntelliSense embodied visual cognition engine and IntelliSwarm embodied swarm collaboration engine, and the AI recognition rate of the robot can reach up to 96%. Different from the single-frame image recognition reaction of products on the market, it integrates three types of memory: space, semantics and physics, forms continuous cognition of the operation environment, completes the perception closed-loop through cross verification, and can also realize the optimal distribution of multi-machine tasks through the distributed consensus auction algorithm. The product form is specially designed for different scenarios: the ARC100-Ex wheeled inspection robot is adapted to the ground scenarios of the device area and tank farm, and the ARC200-Ex rail-mounted inspection robot focuses on the high-altitude restricted scenarios of pipe corridors and old device areas, without redundant functions, which truly understands the process, dares to dispose and can be deployed stably.

According to market data, the market size of domestic explosion-proof inspection robots in 2023 was only 2.54 billion yuan, and the overall penetration rate is less than 6% at present. It is predicted that the market size will rise to 18.5 billion yuan by 2030, achieving a 7-fold growth in 8 years, and the supply gap in the hundred-billion-yuan-level stock market is very significant.

Many operation and maintenance leaders of cooperative chemical enterprises have feedback that after Bangyao's robots are put into use, frontline inspectors no longer need to frequently enter high-risk areas such as chlor-alkali workshops, acetylene stations and liquid chlorine storage tanks. Daily inspection data is automatically synchronized to the management platform, and preliminary response can be triggered for abnormal situations without waiting for personnel to arrive at the scene, which not only meets the latest compliance acceptance requirements, but also greatly reduces the safety management cost of manual inspection in the long run.

Core members of the team said that special explosion-proof robots are by no means a simple stack of hardware. Without long-polished scenario experience at the frontline of chemical safety, it is impossible to make products that truly adapt to on-site needs and dare to perform disposal actions in high-risk areas. The hazardous chemical process know-how accumulated over years of deep involvement in the frontline is the team's most core barrier. The original intention of developing this product is to eliminate unnecessary high-risk operations in high-risk industrial sites.