Focusing on the application of industrial wireless control equipment in multiple fields - small remote control "dialing thousands of tons"

Recently, a reporter from the Economic Daily came to our company to interview Tan Qiangsheng, Deputy General Manager and Chief Engineer of the Technology Department of CBR Electric Company, Xia Danjiong, Deputy General Manager of CBR Electric Company, and others. The Enterprise section of the Economic Daily published an article titled 'Focusing on Multi Field Applications of Industrial Wireless Control Equipment - Small Remote Control' Dialing Thousand Tons '. CBR will continue to expand the application scenarios of CBR wireless remote control equipment, increase innovation investment, research and develop CBR's strongest brain, and provide richer solutions. The following is the original text of the article:

The flexible application of electrical command wireless control technology is key to the flexible operation of these massive objects weighing hundreds or thousands of tons, such as shield tunneling machines for tunnel excavation, tunneling machines for tunnel excavation, and mobile crushers for crushing mineral materials. Targeting this niche field, Zhejiang CBR Electric Co., Ltd. (hereinafter referred to as 'CBR Electric Company') has conducted in-depth research, independently designed, developed, and produced industrial wireless control equipment, which has been widely used in engineering machinery, construction machinery, metallurgy industry, lifting equipment, and other fields, and has developed into a national high-tech enterprise. From scratch, from existing to excellent, the company has continuously seized the technological high ground in the field of wireless control equipment, reaching the leading level in the industry, with an annual growth rate of over 20%, 'said Xia Danjiong, Deputy General Manager of CBR Electric Company.

Expand application scenarios

With the continuous advancement of intelligent manufacturing in various industries, CBR Electric Company has noticed that close range, non-contact wireless control devices will play an increasingly important role in the control of large equipment such as cranes, construction machinery, garden machinery, and agricultural machinery, which can effectively improve construction safety in harsh environments. To this end, the company has organized a research and development team to fully study related technologies such as radio frequency, wireless communication, and automation bus data interoperability and interconnection, and to promote the application of wireless control equipment in multiple fields, 'said Tan Qiangsheng, Deputy General Manager and Chief Engineer of the Technology Department of CBR Electric Company.

Among numerous high-end equipment, shield tunneling machines are widely used in tunnel projects such as subways, highways, and municipal engineering, and are known as the 'king of mechanical equipment'. In recent years, the construction of infrastructure such as rail transit in China has been continuously promoted, and the frequency of use of shield tunneling machines has significantly increased. The demand for ensuring equipment and personnel safety is also increasing. CBR Electric Company has received an increasing number of wireless control equipment orders that match it. Many of our clients are state-owned enterprises, and they purchase shield tunneling machines at high prices. They have extremely strict requirements for the operability, safety, and adaptability of wireless control equipment, 'Xia Danjiong told reporters.

Continuous innovation around customer needs is the development philosophy that CBR Electric Company has always adhered to. In May 2020, based on a request from a company, CBR Electric Company reached a cooperation intention and signed an agreement to start the design and research and development of wireless remote control devices for shield tunnel segment assembly machines. Matching remote control with machinery is not an easy task. We not only need to solve problems such as data interfaces, instruction transmission, wireless communication protocols, but also need to achieve plug and play between wireless control devices and shield tunneling machines, as well as interoperability with other remote control devices, 'said Tan Qiangsheng. CBR Electric's R&D team is learning relevant knowledge and improving their theoretical level; Continuously analyzing data, adjusting code, and developing technology with independent intellectual property rights in practice. Within two years, the R&D team completed the research and development of the wireless remote control device for the shield tunneling machine segment assembly machine.

Taking the wireless remote control application of shield tunneling machines as a breakthrough point, CBR Electric Company continuously expands its application scenarios and gradually customizes products for other high-end equipment. Compared with foreign products, our remote controllers have strong competitiveness and strive to safeguard infrastructure construction, 'said Tan Qiangsheng.

Developing the 'Strongest Brain'

On the vacant land of CBR Electric Company, a mini excavator is completing various difficult movements. Several tens of meters away, testing personnel hold remote control devices to debug and test them. On the screen of the remote control device, high-definition images captured during machine operation are clearly visible. By installing cameras and image transmission modules on the machine, images can be transmitted in real-time with a delay of no more than 0.2 seconds.

In practical operation, customers have put forward higher requirements for visualization. We are designing and developing multi camera real-time transmission technology, which can capture 360 degree images without dead angles at the work end and remotely transmit them to the control end, greatly improving the accuracy and safety of on-site operations. 'said Sun Dongwei, the technical manager of CBR Electric Company. The R&D team needs to overcome many technical and design difficulties in wireless high-frequency transmission stability, anti-interference ability, and product adaptability to harsh environments.

This mini excavator achieves track walking, steering freedom, and flexible arm movement, and can respond to operation instructions in a very short time, thanks to the dual CPU control technology independently developed by CBR Electric Company. Dual CPUs are equivalent to two 'strongest brains' that work together. One is responsible for receiving work instructions, while the other is responsible for detecting all instruction signals, frequencies, etc., achieving dual protection and maximizing the safety of construction equipment and personnel. Unlike communication transmission methods such as 4G and 5G telecommunications networks or infrared remote control, the company's industrial remote control system uses a private wireless communication protocol between the transmitter and receiver.

To ensure the safety of multiple devices in the same scenario and avoid conflicts, CBR Electric Company has redefined the air protocol for wireless devices based on the characteristics of industrial wireless control, adding content such as device identification and verification of the correctness of enterprise owned communication data to ensure rapid exchange of air data and improve the sensitivity of device control actions. CBR Electric Company also performs secondary encryption and verification on the discovered aerial data according to its own encryption protocol to prevent erroneous reception and actions of data between different companies, ensuring the safe operation of its wireless control equipment. In addition to dual CPU control technology, CBR Electric Company has independently developed passive emergency circuits that make remote control systems more 'smart', and safety relay technology that specifically monitors microprocessors, among other applications.

With a gentle touch of your fingers, you can easily 'lift a thousand pounds' and achieve remote visual and safe control, which is the advantage of wireless control. Although we have made some achievements in the field of industrial wireless control equipment such as lifting machinery, engineering machinery, and mining machinery, we still need to develop more industrial wireless devices suitable for on-site operation in more application scenarios and increase the research and development of wireless video communication distance, 'Tan Qiangsheng told reporters.

At present, CBR Electric Company is researching wireless remote control communication beyond line of sight at distances of 200 meters, 500 meters, and 1000 meters without relying on mobile networks, for emergency rescue scenarios such as fire disaster relief and on-site drainage. The development and application of these technologies can also provide support for the modernization of agricultural machinery.

Innovative solutions

In the PCBA (fully automatic electronic circuit board placement and self testing) production workshop of CBR Electric Company, the reporter saw operators on the fully automatic placement machine putting chips and other electronic components back in place and assembling them into semi-finished products. More than 10 processes including performance testing and overall product performance debugging are required before the finished product can leave the factory. Even if these components are small, they still need to be repeatedly polished and debugged, 'said Xia Danjiong.

Focusing on technology research and development is the advantage of CBR Electric Company's rapid development. The company is equipped with a technical engineering center, laboratory, research and development department, etc., and more than one-third of the employees are full-time technical personnel. Meanwhile, the company's R&D investment has been increasing year by year, currently accounting for over 15% of sales revenue. In addition, the company also collaborates with multiple research institutes in the fields of product industrial design, wireless data transmission, intelligent control, and other technical areas, adhering to open technology innovation and promoting industry university research cooperation.

At present, CBR Electric Company has 6 invention patents, 23 utility model patents, and 11 software copyrights, and has established a complete production system including design and research and development, process design, mold injection molding, PCBA mounting, assembly inspection, logistics and warehousing. With the continuous improvement of technological level, how to transform it into competitive product solutions is the development path that CBR Electric Company is focusing on exploring. Many customers have reported that when they need to repair wireless control devices produced by foreign manufacturers, they must send the equipment abroad to replace parts, which increases a lot of costs. How to provide more solutions for customers is an urgent problem we need to solve, 'said Sun Dongwei.

Once, CBR Electric Company received an urgent notice from a customer that they needed to debug their mechanical control equipment. Sun Dongwei and his colleagues immediately rushed to the underground construction site hundreds of kilometers away with equipment. Due to the disagreement between the operators and technicians, the debugging work did not proceed smoothly. They adjusted the code while researching, constantly changing plans, and finally came up with a new solution within 3 days.

Your product has a great handling feel and can be fine tuned with centimeter level clearance during the final pipe assembly process, which can greatly improve on-site installation and operational efficiency. After debugging, the operating engineer was very satisfied with CBR Electric's solution. Xia Danjiong said that CBR Electric Company will further increase its R&D investment and collaborate with more research institutes to continue developing products suitable for different automation industries, equipping intelligent manufacturing machines with more non-contact control remote control devices.