【89】When the robot dog suddenly lost its sight at minus 35 degrees Celsius

【89】When the robot dog suddenly lost its sight at minus 35 degrees Celsius

Last Friday afternoon, the purchasing director of a certain tree technology company called us suddenly, with a tone full of obvious anxiety. They were developing the fourth generation of robot dogs, and they needed a brand new radar detection module. However, during the tests, the coils of three suppliers all had problems - either they had insufficient anti-interference ability, resulting in a soaring false alarm rate in complex environments; or their structural strength was insufficient, causing the coils to deform when the robot dog ran at high speed. They came to us, but the development time they offered was only two-thirds of the usual time. "I know this is very difficult," the voice on the other end of the phone was a little tired, "but this product is crucial to us."

To be honest, at that time, I was also very nervous in my heart. The millimeter-wave radar coil in the robot dog in dynamic environments - this was not in our usual comfort zone. What surprised me even more was that the next day, their chief technology officer personally brought a prototype to Dongguan. In the meeting room, when the silver-gray robot dog demonstrated on-site, due to radar misjudgment, it directly crashed into the green plants at the corner. The CTO supported his head: "Look, this is our current predicament. We need an 'eye' that can work stably in movement, vibration, and electromagnetic interference."

But the challenges were not over there. After disassembling their prototype, we found that the real problem was very specific: First, the structural space of the robot dog was extremely limited, so the size of the coil had to be 30% smaller than the regular product, but the performance indicators could not be reduced; Second, the movement of the robot dog would generate complex multi-axis vibrations, and the traditional encapsulation process was prone to cracking under such conditions; Third, the internal motors and circuit boards of the robot dog were dense, and the electromagnetic environment was extremely complex, requiring the coil to have extremely strong anti-interference ability. At that moment, I understood that this was not just making a part, but challenging the combined limits of miniaturization, vibration resistance, and anti-interference.

Why did we finally take on this challenge? Because I remembered a similar case three years ago for a certain drone leading enterprise. At that time, their agricultural pest control drones needed to fly autonomously in the complex orchards, and the stability of the radar was extremely high. We spent four months developing a dedicated coil with active temperature compensation and vibration isolation, which increased the obstacle avoidance success rate of the drones from 78% to 99.5%. That project allowed us to accumulate valuable experience in dynamic environments. Now, this experience can be transformed into a solution for the robot dog of a certain tree.

The research and development process was full of twists and turns. What moved me the most was our engineering team. Engineer Li, who was in charge of structural design, spent three consecutive weeks in the vibration laboratory, testing seventeen different buffering structures; Materials Engineer Chen Xiao, in order to find the most suitable encapsulation glue, contacted eight suppliers at home and abroad and made fifty formula adjustments. On that late night when the third prototype test failed, I saw the young people in the project group gathered around the experimental table, eating instant noodles while having intense discussions, with no sign of giving up in their eyes. I understood the anxiety of the certain tree team - they were betting on the future of the entire product line, and what we needed to do was to become their most reliable cornerstone.

On the eighth delivery, we witnessed the breakthrough with the certain tree team at the testing field in Shanghai. That robot dog agilely moved through the obstacle-filled area, stopping, turning, and crossing obstacles. The radar no longer made misjudgments. When it completed the last set of tests and stopped steadily at the finish line, the CTO of certain tree forcefully patted our engineers' shoulders: "Done!" At that moment, I knew that we not only completed an order, but also helped an innovative enterprise break through a key technical bottleneck.

This story began with an anxious phone call, grew through thousands of vibration tests, and blossomed in the smooth running of the robot dog. It tells not only about the breakthrough in technology, but also about the trust of two teams working side by side towards the same goal. When that robotic dog successfully "sees" the world in a complex real environment, our coils have fulfilled their tiny but crucial mission.

To give the most complex environments the clearest perception - Golden Eagle's electronic special coils equip cutting-edge technology with reliable eyes.