Reported on April 13: Recently, Yan Jinjin, founder of Qingdao Lingran Intelligent Technology Co., Ltd. (hereinafter referred to as Lingran Technology), has secured two consecutive orders. The company's independently developed Otter series underwater robots will be applied to university teaching and offshore wind farm inspections.
This one-person company (OPC), founded on January 26, 2026, is breaking the homogenization dilemma in the underwater robot industry with independent technologies.
"At present, the technical foundation of quite a number of domestic underwater robot teams still comes from open-source solutions designed for drones such as Pixhawk, which were initially mainly used for ROVs (Remotely Operated Vehicles)," Yan Jinjin pointed out the industry pain point directly when talking about the current industry situation. "This architecture has an inherent ceiling for AUVs (Autonomous Underwater Vehicles) required for underwater embodied intelligence. No matter how much refinement and optimization are done on it, its underlying limitations can hardly be broken through."
Yan Jinjin's team refers to the upper-level decision-making system as the "brain" and the core controller as the "cerebellum". They have attempted to reconstruct an autonomous underwater vehicle integrating a "brain + cerebellum" from the bottom up and named it Navi Hub.
Taking Navi Hub as the foundation, the team has launched products including Otter I Pro and Otter II. Featuring low cost, modularization and intelligence, these products support secondary development of the ROS system, have a maximum diving depth of 50 meters, and are capable of multi-robot cooperative operations. The two robots made their debut at China International Maritime Exhibition at the end of 2025.
Edge computing is the key to technological breakthroughs. "Underwater communication is extremely difficult, so robots have to 'think' on their own," Yan Jinjin explained. Edge computing technology enables robots to conduct autonomous perception and decision-making underwater without relying on remote instructions, and independently complete obstacle avoidance, path planning and other decisions.
"Establishing a company, verifying products in market scenarios and collecting feedback data will facilitate further technological iteration. Our goal is to enable underwater embodied intelligent robots to completely get rid of cables," said Yan Jinjin.
The Otter series underwater robots are adopted in the two orders obtained by Lingran Technology. One Otter robot has been put into scientific research and teaching for research on underwater target recognition, simultaneous localization and mapping, etc.; the other two have been deployed in Jiangsu to serve inspection and survey tasks in scenarios such as offshore wind power and underwater pipelines, realizing the transformation from technology to industry.
The company adopts a typical OPC model: with founder Yan Jinjin as the core of decision-making and technology, relying on the R&D team of the Advanced Intelligent Navigation Laboratory (AI Navi Lab), while the corporate entity is responsible for market expansion and industrialization.
This highly focused model, however, has an urgent demand for early-stage capital and resource connection. Yan Jinjin admitted that the biggest challenge in the initial startup phase was securing seed funding for the transition from zero to one.
This problem of the enterprise was quickly resolved by the Clam Youth Hub (GALA Community). Qingdao West Coast Talent Ecological Industry Group, the operator, intervened promptly, offered advice and suggestions, coordinated and connected industrial application scenarios, and promoted the efficient implementation of technical verification.
The comprehensive talent technology innovation incubation platform built by the Clam Youth Hub integrates entrepreneurship services, talent introduction and cultivation, technological research, achievement maturation and project implementation. It has assembled a team of technical managers with engineering backgrounds to provide professional services in a professional manner. At present, more than 30 enterprises have registered on the platform, and it continues to cultivate the Qingchuang Power OPC program, enabling more technology innovators to take root and thrive in Qingdao's industrial ecosystem.
