【92】Three o'clock in the morning at the EMC laboratory and the robot revolution

【92】Three o'clock in the morning at the EMC laboratory and the robot revolution

At eleven o'clock in the night, the phone vibrated. The voice of the hardware director of Sumei Technology sounded urgent amid the hum of the current: "We need radar coils that can remain accurate even when the robot dog is running at full speed - the prototype is going to the US for an exhibition in three weeks, and all the samples sent by the partner have been ruined." I opened the computer and saw the test video showing the silver-gray robot dog suddenly "go blind" in the middle of the obstacle course and crashing straight into the fence. He sent the last sentence: "Golden Eagle, do you dare to take on this 'dead line' order?"

To be honest, my palms were sweating. This was not a routine inquiry; it was carrying the fate of the customer's product on my shoulders. What was even more unexpected was that the next morning, the CTO of Sumei Technology brought the damaged prototype to our laboratory. When we opened the radar module, everyone gasped in horror - the coil frame was completely broken at the impact point, and the encapsulation material had crumbled into powder. "See?" the CTO pointed at the fracture surface, "When the robot dog is running at full speed, the joint motor vibrates at a frequency of 200 hertz, and the landing impact is 8 Gs. Ordinary coils won't survive for more than three days here."

Why was the problem so difficult? Three fatal factors were right in front of us: First, the chest cavity space of the robot dog is smaller than expected, and the coil must be compressed to 65% of the conventional size while the power density needs to increase by 30%; Second, the combined vibration environment will induce the coil to generate parasitic resonance, directly interfering with the radar echo signal; Third, when 12 sets of joint motors are running simultaneously, the electromagnetic noise is 20 decibels higher than the laboratory data. Our technical director silently measured the damaged part and suddenly looked up and said: "This requires integrating aerospace-grade vibration resistance technology and medical-grade signal purity into a space the size of a fingernail."

The whiteboard in the meeting room still had the curve chart we worked on last year to tackle the problem of the Yifan agricultural drone. At that time, when the drone was moving through the orchard, the radar error rate was as high as 22%. We reconfigured the electromagnetic shielding layer of the coil to suppress the interference signal by 40 decibels. It was that case that enabled us to accumulate the core parameters for dynamic anti-interference. At this moment, this experience was being quickly retrieved - the materials engineer had contacted a Japanese supplier overnight to customize a 0.03 mm thick composite shielding film; the structural group began to model and simulate the stress distribution under an 8 G impact.

What truly moved me was the scene on the third day at midnight. In the vibration laboratory, our 90s engineer Xiao Chen was kneeling on the test bench, using a micrometer to monitor the micro deformation of the coil under the simulated running vibration. His left hand was still covered with adhesive tape - after working continuously for 36 hours, he developed acute gastritis and returned to the laboratory directly from the hospital. "Sister Jeannie," he didn't look up, "I know the Sumei team is definitely not sleeping right now. Their robot dog is going to stand on the exhibition stage in Las Vegas to let the whole world see how bright China's robot eyes are."

When the eighth prototype was completed, there were only 72 hours left until shipment. In the extreme testing field of Sumei Technology in Shanghai, the robot dog completed the obstacle course perfectly at full speed for the first time. When it finally stood still, the CTO suddenly turned around and held our engineer's hand. This middle-aged man in his forties had red eyes: "We won." Later, we learned that they had bet the entire quarter's R&D budget on this.

In this story, there is no magic; it's just a group of people completing extreme challenges in extreme time. When Sumei's robot dog skillfully navigated through complex obstacles at the CES exhibition, those viewers wouldn't know that there was a young man who had been receiving intravenous treatment in the middle of the night in that "eye" and a Chinese factory that was willing to take on "dead line" orders.

Letting machines see the world in extreme dynamics - the Golden Eagle special coil injects the perception soul into cutting-edge robots.