【93】From Fukushima To Mohe: Illuminating The Eyes of Machines at Extreme Locations

【93】From Fukushima to Mohe: Illuminating the Eyes of Machines at Extreme Locations

The new product trailer of a certain technology company has dominated the screens this morning. But there is another video still in my phone - three months ago, their robot dog suddenly "lost sight" on the ice surface of Mohe at -35 degrees Celsius, with the radar screen turning into a sea of snow. At that time, a certain Tree test engineer trembled in the satellite phone: "All parameters were normal, but the coil in the extremely cold environment had a phase drift of a full 15 degrees."

We flew overnight to Harbin. In the temporarily set up low-temperature laboratory, the disassembled radar module was covered with ice crystals. The problem was quickly identified: The traditional temperature compensation circuit had a 0.8-second delay in sudden temperature changes, while the robot dog was running at a speed of 4 meters per second on the ice surface - this meant that there would be a perception blind zone every 3.2 meters. The CTO of a certain Tree threw the test data on the table: "The German supplier said this was the physical limit, and the Japanese manufacturer wanted to increase the price by 300% for customization. What about Golden Eagle? Are you brave enough to rewrite this limit?"

Yes. But behind this word was three terrifying gates: First, the response time of the compensation circuit must be compressed to within 0.1 seconds, and the existing chip architecture cannot achieve this; Second, in the 125-degree temperature range from -40 degrees Celsius to 85 degrees Celsius, the Q value of the coil must be controlled within 5%; Third, all improvements must be completed within the original packaging size, without adding one milligram of weight. That night, we came up with a phase change temperature control solution designed for satellite payloads - this was a dangerous move never attempted in the civilian field.

The breakthrough came by accident. Materials engineer Old Zhou, while cleaning experimental equipment, accidentally discovered the memory deformation characteristic of a certain industrial gel at low temperatures. The team immediately seized this phenomenon and continuously tested 17 formulations, finally creating a three-layer composite structure: The outer layer is responsible for -40°C anti-cracking, the middle layer realizes phase change buffering, and the inner layer maintains stable electromagnetic performance. On the seventh low-temperature test night, when the phase curve on the screen finally became as straight as a line, the laboratory erupted in cheers that startled the entire floor.

The most difficult delivery occurred on the plateau. The robot dog of a certain Tree was to undergo a 48-hour continuous test at an altitude of 3,800 meters in Qinghai. We dispatched two engineers carrying a portable mass spectrometer to follow the test site throughout the day. In the evening of the next day, a sudden sandstorm reduced the visibility at the test site to 5 meters. When everyone hid in the shelters, our engineers rushed towards the test platform against the wind and sand - they had to extract the last segment of high-frequency vibration data before the equipment lost power. Later, the a certain Tree project manager, looking at them covered in yellow sand as they rushed back, whispered to me: "I finally understand why you can do what others can't."

This data obtained at the cost of sandstorms eventually enabled the coil to pass the MIL-STD-810G military standard test. When the CTO of a certain Tree signed the acceptance report, he suddenly looked up and asked: "Do you know? This robot dog will go to the Fukushima nuclear power plant site next month for an investigation mission." He paused for a long time, "The radiation intensity there would cause ordinary electronic components to fail within 72 hours. But now we believe that the coil you made can survive it."

From the ice field of Mohe to the Qinghai Plateau, from the laboratory's extreme conditions to the real disaster site, this evolutionary path is marked with numbers of temperature and altitude. When the robot dog of a certain Tree finally stood in front of the laser array at the new product launch, skillfully avoiding all moving obstacles, I saw that the audience below was wiping their eyes - they thought they were witnessing a technological miracle, while we knew that they were witnessing how humans repeatedly approached the physical limit.

The awakening of perception across a 125-degree temperature difference - Golden Eagle enables Chinese robots to still have sharp eyes at the end of the world.