Autel Robotics Releases AAGI Air-Ground Intelligence Solution, Enabling Collaborative Operation of Unmanned Swarms via the AIP Platform

Author｜Huang Nan

Editor｜Yuan Silai

Recently, Autel Intelligent Technology (Autel Robotics) held a launch event in Shenzhen for its AAGI (Autel Air-Ground Intelligence) solutions brand, and together with Daohe Tongtai and Saifang Technology unveiled the AIP foundation along with three industry application platforms: EIS 2.0, Avant Hub 2.0, and Skyshield 2.0.

At the event, Autel demonstrated coordinated operations among air-ground equipment including drones, unmanned ground vehicles, robots, and intelligent drone nests.

AAGI is not a standalone hardware product, but a collaborative system that connects aerial drones, ground robots, unmanned vehicles, and industry software. Autel CEO Wang Yuelu summarized it as "coordination between digital agents and physical agents": through standardized products, scenario-customized services, and end-to-end delivery, air-ground capabilities enter real business processes rather than remaining at the level of single-device demonstrations.

Autel Air-Ground Intelligence (Image source/Company)

This shift corresponds to changes underway in the unmanned equipment industry. In scenarios such as transportation, energy, industrial parks, and public safety, wide inspection coverage, high volumes of repetitive work, and the difficulty of cross-system handoffs for exception handling have long been common pain points.

As the number of drones, unmanned vehicles, robots, and other equipment increases, the industry's focus has shifted from "whether equipment exists" to "whether equipment can collaborate, whether information can be aggregated, and whether business systems can be integrated." Single-device capability is no longer a scarce resource; the stable division of labor among heterogeneous equipment within the same task, and the business closed loop from detection to handling, are becoming the new threshold.

But the engineering difficulty of heterogeneous coordination is often underestimated. Drones and unmanned vehicles differ significantly in perception perspective, motion dynamics, communication conditions, and compute constraints; tightly coupled decision-making and limited communication bandwidth make stable coordination far more complex than single-device control.

The engineering path AAGI offers is the AIP platform: with the business ontology at its core, it links regions, facilities, equipment, and tasks, translating operational requirements into plans executable by different equipment, while personnel retain confirmation and oversight authority at key steps.

Autel EIS 2.0 intelligent security platform (Image source/Company)

On top of the platform layer, different industry applications target security, inspection, and low-altitude safety respectively. EIS 2.0 supports issuing tasks via conversation and maps, and centrally viewing device locations, on-site imagery, and execution progress; it is suitable for regional security, police law enforcement, and emergency rescue in complex environments. Avant Hub 2.0 targets inspection of power, oil and gas, highways, and industrial parks, mapping imagery and locations to specific equipment, road sections, or facilities, and integrating with customers' existing work-order systems. Skyshield 2.0 aggregates target leads, trajectories, alerts, and imagery from different detection devices, supporting key-area monitoring and authorized handling.

The equipment matrix is the physical foundation for AAGI's deployment. On the aerial side, the EVO III series has been upgraded around autonomous operation, environmental perception, networked coordination, and open payloads; APEX offers 10-kilogram-class payload capacity, supporting multiple payloads and cross-aircraft coordination; the Longyu series handles long-endurance, wide-area inspection, with supporting drone nests that enable remote task dispatch, automatic takeoff and landing, and automatic battery swapping.

On the ground side, the Explorer Flex can switch between wheeled and flight forms, penetrating indoors, underground, and narrow spaces; Nest 2 supports routine unmanned operation; the Ranger series has introduced the wheeled robot R1-W and the bipedal robot X1, targeting industrial park inspection, facility maintenance, public-area patrols, and emergency support.

In addition, Autel disclosed follow-up plans for the Pioneer series of unmanned vehicles, the Vector vectored-thrust drone, and the Titan 100 heavy-lift transport drone; the related products will be advanced in stages in line with R&D and validation progress.

Autel air-ground equipment (Image source/Company)

From a strategic perspective, Autel is extending from an equipment supplier to a system solutions provider. AAGI relies on Autel's intelligent hardware platform, integrating Daohe Tongtai's industry brain model capabilities and its technical accumulation in power, oil and gas, and transportation, as well as Saifang Technology's experience in low-altitude safety, to jointly advance application development and coordinated delivery.

In terms of delivery, Autel combines standard products, FDEs (Field Delivery Engineers), and full-process services: standard products provide a reusable software and hardware foundation, FDEs handle on-site adaptation and business process integration, and full-process services cover deployment, training, and subsequent operations and maintenance. At the same time, AIP distills validated industry rules, operational workflows, and device integration capabilities into reusable modules, so that new projects do not have to integrate from scratch, reducing duplicate development and on-site commissioning costs.

The focus of this delivery structure is not merely selling equipment to customer sites, but gradually turning collaborative operational capability into replicable, maintainable system capability.

Autel air-ground intelligence solutions (Image source/Company)

Intelligent operation of unmanned swarms is moving from "single-device demonstrations" to "system operations," but the competitive focus at this stage is no longer the parameter ceiling of any single piece of equipment, but rather the stability of collaborative systems in repetitive tasks, the interoperability of heterogeneous devices, fault self-scheduling and fault-tolerance mechanisms, and the ability to remain operable and replicable at scale under real working conditions over the long term.

On the commercialization side, Autel is advancing through a "projects + channels" approach, and its AI large-model services are exploring pay-per-Token usage. This model is still in its early stages: the long-term reliability of air-ground coordination, the consistency of multi-device delivery across different sites, and whether AI services can form a sustainable payment structure all still require validation through more real-world projects.