Key takeaways
- Four suppliers, two clusters. Rail-mounted inspection in Foshan, walking robots in Hangzhou, fibre sensing in Suzhou, robotic switching in Nanjing.
- Each solves a different engineering problem. Adapting a robot to a fixed high-voltage route, keeping a quadruped stable and oriented inside an unstructured tunnel, turning a cable route into continuous measurement, and acting on equipment inside a live installation are four separate capabilities, not four versions of one product.
- Each has a documented project behind it. 45 months of continuous operation at a coastal cable terminal, a Singapore tunnel pilot, more than 1,000 monitored cable routes, and one live switchgear operation.
- Hangzhou, Suzhou and Nanjing can be combined into one Yangtze Delta itinerary. Foshan is the Pearl River Delta option, an hour from Guangzhou.
- The agenda follows your maintenance question, not a fixed showroom script.
Power robotics company visits in China
China Innovation Visits arranges these four visits for overseas utilities, engineering firms, infrastructure investors and institutional groups. A programme combines a product demonstration, an application briefing and a technical discussion with the supplier's engineers.
Send your group size, dates and the maintenance tasks you want to understand and we will propose the route and the discussion agenda around them.
Four companies, four different maintenance tasks
| Company | City | Task the system performs | Evidence behind the visit |
|---|---|---|---|
| Keystar | Foshan, Guangdong | Rail-mounted visual and thermal inspection on a fixed route | A 2023 report recording 45 months of operation at two coastal cable terminal stations |
| DEEP Robotics | Hangzhou, Zhejiang | Walking inspection inside a live cable tunnel | An overseas utility's account of its Singapore tunnel inspection pilot |
| AGIOE | Suzhou, Jiangsu | Continuous distributed fibre sensing along a cable route | A 2023 filing reporting work across more than 1,000 cables and passages |
| NR Electric | Nanjing, Jiangsu | Robotic manipulation of switchgear under remote command | A supplier report of a robot operating switchgear during a substation incident |
Uptime, coverage and avoided outages: three figures drawn from the project records below. Sources: Keystar (2023), AGIOE IPO filing (2023), NR Electric (2026).
Keystar in Foshan: inspection along a fixed route
Keystar, based in Foshan, makes robots for several distinct power tasks: inspection along overhead transmission lines, repair of damaged earth wires, and rail-mounted inspection for indoor sites, cable tunnels and coal conveyor galleries. Those are separate product lines. A company that builds one of them has not thereby demonstrated the others. Keystar company and product information
A line-work robot straddling an overhead conductor on the workshop floor at Keystar's Foshan facility. The rotor arms and carbon-fibre side plates belong to a different product line than the rail-mounted units used on the Zhoushan terminals. Photographed on site, November 2026.
The clearest public record is a project report published in June 2023. State Grid's Zhoushan power supply company commissioned two rail-mounted inspection robots in September 2019 at the Zhenhai and Dapengdao cable terminal stations, both on the 500 kV Luowei line that links Ningbo to the Zhoushan islands. The supplier reported 45 months of operation at publication. Keystar project report
The engineering constraint on that project was the site, not the robot. Cable terminal stations sit on the coast, are awkward for staff to reach, and take typhoon and rain-driven flooding. The units were built to IP65 for dust and water ingress with corrosion-resistant housings, and they photograph cable joints, control cabinets, distribution boxes and drainage wells using visible-light and thermal imaging. Inspection data is processed by recognition algorithms on the supplier's own platform and issued as a report.
The charging dock on the inspection rail at a coastal cable terminal. Both the operating utility's livery and Keystar's own branding appear on the equipment. Source: Keystar, 2023.
For a delegation, this is the case to take when the question is about a constrained route rather than a mobile platform. A fixed rail is a concession: it buys a repeatable path through the installation at the cost of reach. The specifics worth raising with the engineers are which joints and cabinets on a 500 kV terminal actually fail, how far the camera head travels off the rail, how the charging dock holds up in salt air, and what happens to a reported defect after the report is issued.
DEEP Robotics in Hangzhou: mobile inspection in a tunnel
DEEP Robotics develops four-legged robots, their control technology and core components for industrial applications. Its technical scope spans environmental perception, navigation and motion control: the capabilities needed to carry an inspection payload through a complex site. DEEP Robotics company profile
The strongest reference for an international delegation is the overseas one, because the platform is Chinese and the operating knowledge is not. SP Group, Singapore's national grid operator, published a November 2024 account of SPock, a robotic dog carrying video and thermal cameras through power tunnels, and explained how a technical officer helped train the system on what counts as a hazard. SP Group inspection account
SPock inside a Singapore power cable tunnel, with the camera and lighting payload it carries on inspection runs. The navigation and defect definitions were reworked for this site. Source: SP Group, 2024.
DEEP Robotics identifies SPock as an adaptation of its X30 platform, and its March 2025 account describes changes to sensors, algorithms and navigation logic for that environment, with inspectors supplying defect images and training scenarios. The deployment is described as a pilot within the tunnel network. DEEP Robotics project account
The Hangzhou programme covers the X30 platform and the company's wider product matrix, from quadruped to wheeled-legged and humanoid formats. A related option in the same city is our ShenHao Robot visit, which builds wheeled, rail-mounted, quadruped and operating robots for grid and rail applications; a delegation with a day to spare can compare the two approaches side by side. Full details of the Hangzhou half-day are in our DEEP Robotics visit guide.
AGIOE in Suzhou: continuous sensing along the whole route
Suzhou-based AGIOE develops optical fibre sensors and asset monitoring systems for power facilities, submarine cables and utility tunnels. It listed on Shanghai's STAR Market in 2023. The capability this article focuses on is making conditions along hard-to-access cable infrastructure measurable continuously, rather than at the points a machine happens to visit. AGIOE is not a sensing-only company: a 2024 filing describes a quadruped inspection robot it has already brought to market, designed for autonomous patrol in mixed environments. AGIOE 2024 disclosure, PDF page 5
Its 2023 IPO filing reported monitoring and maintenance across more than 1,000 cables and cable passages in more than 30 provinces and cities. The filing describes distributed optical fibre sensors, gateways and software; its submarine cable system uses fibre for sensing and communication, including measurements of temperature, strain and disturbance. AGIOE filing, PDF pages 91–92 and 96
The filing lists a 2020 online cable monitoring project for a State Grid Beijing 110 kV line associated with preparations for the Beijing 2022 Winter Olympics, and a 330 kV overhead-to-underground conversion project in northeast Xi'an. These are references for the monitoring system; the filing's broader product description does not specify every sensor installed on a given line. Project reference, PDF page 96
A robot samples points and a distributed fibre system samples a line, so a delegation that has already seen one of the mobile platforms should see this next. Continuous sensing reports the condition of a route and where it changed; mobile inspection reports what one asset looked like on the day of the visit. A utility that buys one and expects the other's answers has bought the wrong system, and pressing a supplier on that distinction is more informative than comparing specifications.
NR Electric in Nanjing: a robot that operates the switch
NR Electric is a Nanjing-based power protection and control supplier. Its company profile identifies applications in major Chinese transmission projects, including the Three Gorges system, and reports that its wider products and solutions have reached more than 150 countries and regions. NR Electric company profile
On 6 June 2026 a control circuit fault at a 10 kV bay inside a 110 kV substation in Xi'an disabled both remote operation of the switchgear and the protection trip. The alternatives were to send a person to the panel beside faulty equipment, or to de-energise the whole 10 kV bus section remotely, which would have taken 21 bays at the station offline. NR Electric reports that a PCS-9180 quadruped with a robotic arm was started with a single remote command and performed a live local opening operation on the switchgear with no one standing beside it. NR Electric project account
A PCS-9180 quadruped working an opened switchgear panel after a control circuit fault disabled remote operation. No operator stood beside the equipment. Source: NR Electric, 2026.
The supplier describes visual guidance and human-machine demonstration teaching as the two methods used to make the operation reliable. Manipulation changes the engineering questions: positioning tolerance, contact force, the interface between a standard arm and a panel designed for a human hand, operator authority over a machine acting inside a live installation, and what a failed attempt leaves behind. This is the visit to choose when the delegation's interest is switching safety and emergency response rather than condition monitoring.
Combining the four into one itinerary
The four sites split into two regional groups. Hangzhou, Suzhou and Nanjing can be combined into one Yangtze Delta itinerary. Foshan is the Pearl River Delta option, an hour from Guangzhou, and pairs with the manufacturing visits already in our Guangzhou technology tour. A group that already has business in Guangdong can add Foshan without building a separate trip.
Project and public record, kept apart by date type: commissioning in September 2019 (Keystar), project year 2020 (AGIOE), publication date November 2024 (SP Group), and the incident date 6 June 2026 (NR Electric). None of these is a claim about when a product was first developed. Sources: Keystar (2023), AGIOE (2023), SP Group (2024), DEEP Robotics (2025), NR Electric (2026).
Which combination to take is a technical decision rather than a logistical one. Rail-mounted inspection and distributed sensing answer what condition an asset is in. Mobile inspection and robotic operation answer what an asset looks like inside a space, and what can then be done about a fault. A group focused on monitoring takes the first pair; a group focused on perception and handling adds the other two.
Questions before booking a power robotics visit in China
Which of the four companies can our delegation visit? All four: Keystar in Foshan, DEEP Robotics in Hangzhou, AGIOE in Suzhou and NR Electric in Nanjing. They can be booked individually or combined into one itinerary. We confirm dates and the specific scope with each host before you commit.
What can a visit include at these companies? Typically a demonstration area or showroom, an application briefing and a technical discussion with engineers, within the scope each host agrees. Tell us whether your priority is inspection robotics, sensing, navigation, software integration or robotic operation, and the agenda is built around it.
Can we discuss specific applications with these companies, rather than just walking the site? Yes. Tell us in advance which topics you want to work through, and we will coordinate with the company to have the engineers who work on them join the discussion. This is not limited to the visit itself: we can also support follow-up cooperation.
Can the programme include an operating substation or power cable tunnel? Access to an operating utility installation requires separate arrangements and is not part of a supplier visit. A supplier visit covers the company's own facilities; a project described in an article does not by itself establish access to that project site. We confirm the actual locations and activities during planning.
How far ahead should we plan, and what group size works? Plan at least 30 days ahead. The ideal group size is 10 to 20; larger groups are usually more cost-effective, and smaller teams including a two- or three-person engineering group can often be accommodated at a higher per-person rate. Share your preferred dates and nationalities early so we can coordinate host scheduling and participant registration.
Can we visit more than one company in a single trip? Yes. Hangzhou, Suzhou and Nanjing can be combined into one Yangtze Delta itinerary; Foshan is the Pearl River Delta option, an hour from Guangzhou. Tell us which maintenance tasks matter most and we will propose the shortest route that covers them.
What happens if either side needs to cancel, and how are fees refunded? Hosts do not normally withdraw at short notice, and the exception is force majeure. If one does, we will first offer a replacement at the same tier and of the same type; if none of the alternatives is acceptable to you, we refund. On your side, a force majeure event is refunded without penalty. If you cancel for your own reasons 30 days or more before the programme date, that is also refunded without penalty, because it leaves the host time to reallocate its team. Inside 30 days the deposit is not refundable, as most of the coordination work has already been carried out by then.
How can we request a programme and quotation? Send your dates, group size, industry background and technical interests through our programme enquiry form. China Innovation Visits coordinates company reception, scheduling, discussion priorities, local transport and English interpretation, and confirms the proposed scope during planning.
The facilities and areas open on any given day are subject to what each host opens, and we confirm the final scope in writing during planning, before you commit.
Arrange a power robotics company visit in China
Tell us which maintenance task your team wants to understand and what you hope to take back from China. We will identify which of the four suppliers addresses that interest, then confirm what can be visited and discussed on site.
Request your power robotics visit programme, or explore our wider company visits and factory tours in China. China Innovation Visits provides the full arrangements, including company reception, local transport and English interpretation.