As the National Day holiday wraps up, Hunan University PhD graduate Liu Xingbo and his team are preparing for a trip to Nanjing, where he will deliver a nationally pioneering product to a chemical pipeline manufacturer — an intelligent welding robot for pipeline elbows. The company behind this equipment is Changsha Xinghan Robot Co., Ltd., founded by Liu Xingbo. This year, the lab-born enterprise secured a 1 million yuan investment from the Hunan Province College Student Entrepreneurship Investment Fund, and its business has expanded from construction machinery in Changsha to shipbuilding, machine tools, chemical pipelines, and other industrial scenarios across the country. "Welding used to rely on the hands and eyes of veteran craftsmen. Now it relies on algorithms and vision," Liu Xingbo said. "But ultimately, it still comes down to people — people think it through clearly, and then machines can execute it properly."

Taking Root in Changsha: One Wenzhou Client Sparks the First Prototype

Liu Xingbo is a native of Yuncheng, Shanxi, and has already spent 20 years in Changsha. In 2006, he arrived in Changsha and entered Central South University of Forestry and Technology to study Materials Forming and Control Engineering. In 2013, he was admitted to Hunan University for his doctorate, researching the physical mechanisms of materials and heat during laser processing — in plain terms, the most fundamental scientific questions behind welding. "The universities in Changsha gave me solid academic training. That was the starting point for everything that followed," Liu Xingbo said.

Welding is a foundational process in manufacturing, but in recent years, fewer and fewer people are taking up the trade. Data from the Ministry of Human Resources and Social Security shows that the national shortage of welders exceeds 3 million, with only about 5% possessing high-end skills such as digital welding and specialty material welding. Welders born in the 1960s and 1970s together account for 61% of the workforce, while those born in the 1990s make up only 13%.

In 2018, before a senior fellow student went abroad, he recommended Liu Xingbo to join the welding laboratory at the Changsha Intelligent Robot Research Institute. While pursuing his doctorate, he took over the management and operations of the lab. Life in the lab was quiet until one day a client from Wenzhou came knocking with a container support leg welding project. "Others couldn't do it, but we saw market demand and boldly took it on." During that period, Liu Xingbo attended school during the day, arrived at the workshop around four or five in the afternoon, and worked until two or three the next morning — nearly a month straight. "The knowledge of mechanics, welding, and robotics we learned at university was rapidly applied to this scenario." The three-month delivery speed astonished the client — they had approached several other companies before, all of which quoted two to three times higher and said it couldn't be done. "We didn't know how difficult it would be at first. We just felt it could be done. One robot can replace four workers, and the welding quality was recognized by the client." That first prototype became the seed of the company.

At the end of 2021, Changsha Xinghan Robot Co., Ltd. was established. Since then, leveraging Changsha's world-leading construction machinery industry cluster, more than 60 robots have been deployed at Zoomlion's tower crane bases in Changsha and Hengshui, with cumulative contract value exceeding 10 million yuan. Later, as tower crane work declined, Liu Xingbo felt uneasy. He didn't want to rely on just one industry. "The demand for welding isn't limited to construction machinery. Changsha has the world's best construction machinery industry cluster, but our business can't be confined here," he said. It was precisely Changsha's open and inclusive industrial atmosphere that gave him the courage to step out of his comfort zone and march into broader markets.

Breaking Out: From Changsha to the National Stage

In the debugging workshop in Changsha, the intelligent welding robot for pipeline elbows is undergoing final testing. Liu Xingbo told reporters that pipeline elbows are different from shipbuilding plates — pipes are round-to-round connections. Although the form is uniform, pressure pipelines are priced by the inch and carry extremely high added value, with equally high demands on welding quality. The client's requirement: one-pass welding with guaranteed stability. To achieve this "stability," the robot is equipped with two pairs of "eyes." A 3D camera with scanning precision of 0.02 millimeters locates the weld seam position first. A molten pool camera uses an infrared lens to monitor the state of the molten iron in real time under the intense light after arc initiation — weld quality is visible throughout the entire process. There is also a small welding robot called "Zhulong": weighing less than 10 kilograms, it can be lifted with one hand yet can crawl inside the boom of a heavy-duty crane to complete welding. Previously, such work could only be done from the outside. Now that products are going overseas, welding standards have risen accordingly, requiring internal welding. "Zhulong" was tailor-made for this scenario. Two scenarios, two sets of logic, but both point to the same goal — enabling robots to take on work in places where humans cannot enter or cannot do well.

Starting with the pioneering equipment in Nanjing, the company has expanded to shipbuilding in Jiangxi, machine tools in Shandong, chemical pipelines in Zhejiang, and steel structures in Jiangsu — Xinghan Robot's business has grown from Changsha to the entire country. Since its founding, cumulative revenue has exceeded 30 million yuan.

Over the years, Liu Xingbo has been pondering another question: how to make robots affordable for more factories? "What we sell isn't robot products — it's smart manufacturing production line solutions," Liu Xingbo said. They pioneered an "IRaaS" model in the industry — intelligent welding robots as a service. Clients don't need to spend hundreds of thousands of yuan on equipment; they simply pay by usage hours or number of workpieces welded. "It lowers the threshold for small and medium-sized enterprises, and for us, it makes it easier to replicate solutions at scale."

Policy Support: Million-Yuan Fund Backs Lab-Based Entrepreneur

The model exists, but what supports the model is people. Today, the company has 18 employees, 70% of whom are in R&D, most of them fellow master's and doctoral students from his university days. In 2024, the Hunan Provincial Party Committee and Provincial Government introduced the "Seven Ones" policy to support college student entrepreneurship, injecting a strong boost for young entrepreneurs like Liu Xingbo. This year, Xinghan Robot received a 1 million yuan investment from the first phase of the Hunan Province College Student Entrepreneurship Investment Fund. Behind this investment was years of sustained attention. "This project was recommended to us by an investor, but one of the founders had already had in-depth communication and understanding with us back in 2021 when our company launched the 'Red Maple Plan,'" said Yu Zhixing, Deputy Director of Investment at Hunan Lushan Technology Investment Co., Ltd. "So overall, we have considerable trust in this team."

By the time of contact, Xinghan Robot already had fairly mature, deliverable products, but what Yu Zhixing valued was not just the product itself. "There are mainly two aspects. On one hand, the technological barriers are clear — the project was jointly developed by teams from Central South University and Hunan University, possesses an independently controllable IRaaS intelligent welding platform, and the products have differentiated technological competitiveness. At the same time, the project's unique commercialization model effectively helps the project team generate sustained cash flow. On the other hand, the market space the project occupies is vast, especially in the shipbuilding and pipeline sectors, and the project already has confirmed orders in place," Yu Zhixing said.

"What the College Student Entrepreneurship Fund gave us isn't just 1 million yuan — it's a vote of confidence — invested in college students, invested in hard technology, invested in a group of young people who came out of the lab," Liu Xingbo said with emotion. During the interview, Liu Xingbo said something very simple: "Changsha gave me the opportunity to study, gave me an environment to start a business, and gave me a group of classmates to work with." From 2006 to 2026, 20 years — the most precious youth of a person's life spent in one city. And this city, with its industrial soil, entrepreneurship policies, and inclusive atmosphere, has rewarded a young person's commitment to putting down roots and persevering.