In the H2 exhibition hall of the 2026 World Artificial Intelligence Conference at the Shanghai World Expo Exhibition and Convention Center in July, an intelligent locomotive resembling an ark is parked in the center of the exhibition area. It is not a concept car, but the Boundless Ark Super Brain Locomotive 2.0 that was already on duty before Typhoon Bawei made landfall. When the typhoon approached Pudong, this AI locomotive completed a nearly 6.5-kilometer inspection of old residential lines in just one hour. The intelligent recognition algorithm captured hidden dangers such as tree line conflicts and foreign object entanglement in real time, and automatically generated defect work orders through built-in calculations and pushed them to the command center.

What truly sets this locomotive apart is the intelligent spider Jingwei robot it is equipped with - a quadruped inspection equipment specially developed for high-risk scenarios in deep wells. The water in the cable well is damp, sealed and oxygen deficient, and the equipment is dense. Manual inspection of the well is not only time-consuming and laborious, but also poses multiple risks such as poisoning, electric shock, and collapse. Zhiyajing Wei relies on quadrupedal walking and flexible telescopic devices to independently complete the entire process of ramp passage, wellhead parking, and underground proximity detection. Liang Qianyi, a staff member of State Grid Shanghai Electric Power Operation and Maintenance, said, "In the past, cable inspections mostly required manual drilling and lowering, which was not only time-consuming and labor-intensive but also had many risks. Now, there are more intelligent options available

How to operate the vehicle machine well three-dimensional operation and maintenance system

The linkage between the Boundless Ark and the Intelligent Spider Well Guard has established a three-dimensional collaborative operation and maintenance system for vehicles, machines, and wells. As a mobile command platform, locomotives are equipped with dispatch intelligent agents that can autonomously generate unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV) patrol plans; Spider robots go deep underground to complete pipeline detection and hidden defect investigation. This system has been piloted in Pudong Zhangjiang, Jiading Anting and other places, with a daily patrol capacity of 60 kilometers, an overall work efficiency improvement of 67%, and a 50% increase in anomaly recognition accuracy.

At this WAIC, State Grid Corporation of China showcased 41 achievements, including the Super Brain Locomotive 2.0, under the theme of "Source of AI, Foundation of Computing Power, and Energy Power". The AI lineup of the national energy team is unprecedentedly well-organized - China Huadian has released the first domestic safety production model for the power generation industry, with an accuracy rate of over 95% in intent recognition and a reduction of over 50% in electrical equipment fault location time; State Grid Guangming Big Model, Southern Power Grid Big Watt, and China Petroleum Kunlun Big Model were all showcased. Keywords: electricity, AI intelligence

From supercomputers to spider robots, from large models to intelligent agents, artificial intelligence is transforming high-risk operations from human to machine, shifting from post repair to pre prediction. As a power engineer once said, "One day robots will replace our jobs, but dangerous work will do them wellEditor/Cheng Liting