Declaration Channel

When encountering mountains, open roads; when encountering water, build bridges. Since the founding of the country, China's basic industries and infrastructure have undergone a long period of large-scale investment and construction, providing a solid foundation for the development of the national economy and the improvement of people's living standards. However, as time goes by, some of the roads, bridges, railways, and even dams and towers that have been put into use have gradually entered the stage of transformation, upgrading, and maintenance. In order to improve the sustainable service capacity of infrastructure, local governments have successively proposed intelligent, green, and digital maintenance requirements. The '14th Five-Year' green transportation development plan of Jiangsu Province proposes to widely apply modern information technology in the field of infrastructure, including intelligent monitoring and intelligent detection.

The essence of 'lightweight monitoring' is a targeted indicator monitoring focused on scene needs, achieving targeted perception and proactive alarm for scene requirements. It essentially applies Internet of Things technology in the field of infrastructure safety monitoring, discovering damage to infrastructure structures in a timely manner through monitoring throughout their life cycle, assessing their safety, and initiating early warnings in severe cases, thereby improving the efficiency of infrastructure use and preventing risks. Ding Huaping, the founder of Jiangsu Bowei Intelligent Technology Co., Ltd. (hereinafter referred to as 'Bowei Intelligent'), has been researching in this field for many years and has actively promoted the application and promotion of lightweight monitoring in the field of infrastructure.

　　Taking the initiative to explore for entrepreneurship, transforming intellectual property achievements.

Ding Huaping, PhD from the School of Electronic Science and Engineering at Nanjing University, a high-level recommended talent in Nanjing, a technology project review expert in Jiangsu Province, and an external supervisor for master's students at Nanjing University and Southeast University... As an expert talent, Ding Huaping has researched in the interdisciplinary fields of electronic science and technology and structural engineering for more than ten years, focusing on the application of Internet of Things products in the field of structural safety. He has published more than 10 papers in core journals at home and abroad such as SCI/EI, authorized 6 national invention patents, and has led and participated in more than ten major intelligent detection projects for highways, bridges, and tunnels. Despite having a rich knowledge reserve and frontline experience in the transformation of scientific and technological innovation achievements, the marketization of research results has always been a difficult problem for Ding Huaping.

In March 2021, Ding Huaping invited two friends who had been deeply involved in the road and bridge field for more than ten years to join him in founding Bowei Intelligent. They formed a core technology team mainly composed of young doctors from Nanjing University and the Chinese Academy of Sciences, focusing on the research and industrialization of 'lightweight perception and structural health monitoring' technology, effectively bringing scientific research results to the market and combining them with real market needs. After a year of development, Bowei Intelligent has created a set of mature and commercially viable intelligent monitoring products that combine software and hardware.

In early 2022, to accelerate technological innovation and obtain more funding support, Ding Huaping participated in the selection of 'Excellent Entrepreneurship Projects for Young College Students in Nanjing' and received an investment subsidy of 200,000 yuan from the Nanjing Human Resources and Social Security Bureau and the Nanjing Innovation Investment Group. With the help of this funding, Bowei Intelligent further iterated its technology and products and cooperated with Nanjing University to establish a joint laboratory for artificial intelligence acceleration and deep learning algorithm research, continuously optimizing algorithms in lightweight perception. In November 2022, Bowei Intelligent was successfully selected for the 'Zijin Mountain Talent New Port Plan' high-level innovation and entrepreneurship talent project.

　　Leveraging core technology and advantages to obtain follow-up investment from venture capital funds.

'Jiangsu is one of the earliest regions to apply lightweight monitoring technology in bridge monitoring and has achieved significant results,' Ding Huaping introduced. 'This year, China Transportation News reported that the maintenance personnel of the Jiangsu Provincial Department of Transportation discovered water accumulation and corrosion issues at the anchor heads of a certain highway bridge through the alarm information sent by the lightweight health monitoring system. After further monitoring the corrosion rate, they assessed and eliminated safety hazards. The 'lightweight monitoring technology and equipment' are gradually being promoted and recognized.'

Based on interdisciplinary research results and the case experiences and data models obtained from experiments on the Qiangma Bridge, Taizhou Bridge, Guangzhou New TV Tower, and Nanjing Yangtze River Tunnel, the Bowei Intelligent team has developed wireless lightweight tilt sensors, vibration sensors, cable force sensors, digital acquisition instruments, and other software and hardware products, with core technological advantages in 'lightweight rapid deployment multi-core perception terminals', 'dynamic big data adaptive real-time processing', and 'probability statistical structural health diagnosis and identification technology'. At the same time, Bowei Intelligent provides corresponding safety monitoring and early warning solutions based on different structural parameters, structural forms, and physical and human influence factors for bridges, tunnels, slopes, buildings, etc., and has implemented deployment and application in multiple provinces including Jiangsu, Guangdong, Ningxia, and Guangxi.

'During my research work at the Hong Kong Polytechnic University, our team collected real-time dynamic data of earthquake and typhoon responses at different heights of the Guangzhou Tower. By analyzing the data and comparing the data before, during, and after the earthquake and typhoon, we can determine whether the building has suffered structural damage or internal damage when subjected to external forces, guiding building maintenance. All this work can be predicted through model pre-positioning, rather than waiting for warnings or substantial risks to occur before taking action,' Ding Huaping shared. With long-term experience in the field of structural health and an understanding of the value of data, the research team also participated in the structural safety monitoring solution for the world's first kilometer-level multi-tower cable-stayed bridge—the Taizhou Yangtze River Highway Bridge, accumulating rich project research and industrialization experience.

'Bowei Intelligent's lightweight sensing devices are low-cost, low-power, and highly sensitive. Their non-destructive acquisition technology and diagnostic algorithms, multi-level analysis, and threshold alarms can detect early structural damage and hidden dangers, effectively allowing us to control the risk occurrence rate through technology.' This is the customer's evaluation of the products and services, and I believe this is also our advantage.

In December 2022, Bowei Intelligent, relying on its technological innovation advantages and good market application results, received micro-seed investment from the Nanjing Venture Capital Group. This is not only the investment team's expectation for Bowei Intelligent's development prospects but also an expectation for more application scenarios of lightweight monitoring in the field of transportation infrastructure. Currently, Bowei Intelligent has more than 10 patents and software copyrights, and has successively received honors such as National Technology-based SMEs, Jiangsu Provincial Private Technology Enterprises, and Jiangsu Provincial Innovative SMEs, and is expected to become a national high-tech enterprise.

As an investment fund of the Nanjing Municipal Government, the Nanjing Innovation Investment Group has always played a guiding and leading role of government funds, acting as a 'talent scout', 'companion', and 'enabler' to help scientific and technological innovation enterprises grow. 'As a large number of infrastructure maintenance in our country enters a scientific, refined, and green stage, how to better leverage the role of structural health monitoring systems, collect data, conduct analysis, and provide more accurate basis for structural maintenance decisions is a new topic faced by relevant units. Bowei Intelligent transforms years of research results into lightweight structural monitoring software and hardware systems, and its diagnostic identification technology has industry advantages, which is extremely valuable for long-term maintenance and risk prevention of infrastructure.'

　　Deeply integrate cutting-edge technology to create an industrial integration ecological chain.

After years of research and development, model testing, and analysis, the terminal products of Bowei Intelligent have advantages in the field of "lightweight monitoring". However, according to Ding Huaping, monitoring and early warning should be more "autonomous and intelligent". He believes that in the future, the health monitoring, early warning, and management of infrastructure should address how to use lightweight solutions combined with data mining to determine important indicators such as whether the structure has damage, the location of the damage, and the degree of damage, guiding management units in the operation and management of infrastructure. Therefore, the Bowei Intelligent team is working on the development of higher cost-performance ratio products, enhancing the model's self-adjustment and autonomous learning capabilities, focusing on lightweight to iterate monitoring and early warning equipment towards miniaturization, intelligence, and precision, achieving improvements in monitoring efficiency, precision, and data value.

For the upcoming development plan, Ding Huaping summarized it as the "1+3+6+9" plan, which translates into promoting the construction of "one research and development center", namely the lightweight infrastructure structural safety monitoring center; achieving "three major goals", which are to build a globally influential lightweight structural safety monitoring center, break through key technologies for deep perception of infrastructure and structural damage identification, and serve the national strategy for building a strong transportation country and major engineering applications; enhancing "six advantages", namely lightweight, intelligent, low power consumption, small model, long lifespan, and high precision; and expanding into "nine major fields", including bridges, tunnels, slopes, buildings, wind power, dams, railways, towers, and foundation pits. By creating a comprehensive technology and industry integration ecosystem centered on "perception intelligence + data intelligence + application intelligence", combined with continuous data analysis, ongoing model iteration, and deep learning in artificial intelligence, Bowei Intelligent aims to consolidate its capabilities and rapidly promote lightweight intelligent monitoring solutions nationwide within 3-5 years, developing into a leader in the field of lightweight infrastructure structural safety monitoring.

Source: Venture Capital Group

Reviewed by: Xue Yao

Published by: You Yi