Meituan Robotics Institute Academic Annual Meeting and Low‑Altitude Drone Challenge Summary

On December 19, 2023, the Meituan Robotics Institute held its 2023 Academic Annual Meeting at Tsinghua University Shenzhen International Graduate School, reviewing a year of progress and inviting experts to discuss future robot technology trends. The event also featured the award ceremony for the first Low‑Altitude Economy Intelligent Flight Management Challenge.

Chairman Mao Yinian highlighted collaborations with Southern University of Science and Technology, Fujian University of Technology, and other universities, noting that related research has been submitted to ICRA and other international robotics conferences. The institute announced its 2024 research cooperation plan covering embodied intelligence, autonomous robots, and intelligent unmanned systems.

Mao emphasized that robots will become more intelligent, general, autonomous, and collaborative, evolving from simple tools to partners that integrate deeply into daily life. In 2024 the institute will introduce outstanding student scholarships and a green‑channel internship program to support robot research.

He also explained that Meituan’s extensive real‑world service scenarios provide rich data for the institute to collaborate with academia, offering funding, facilities, and engineering resources to accelerate the translation of academic results into industry applications.

The round‑table forum, hosted by GeekPark founder Zhang Peng, gathered five experts—Wang Tianmiao, Zhang Hong, Zhang Jianwei, Wang Yu, and Xu Huazhe—to discuss robot technology development, application scenarios, and industry prospects.

A subsequent closed‑door forum featured additional scholars sharing insights on embodied intelligence, intelligent unmanned systems, and robot perception and prediction.

The Low‑Altitude Economy Intelligent Flight Management Challenge, co‑organized with the Shenzhen Science and Innovation Committee, attracted 71 teams from 36 universities worldwide, including Tsinghua, Beihang, and Oxford. Seventeen teams entered the performance track and ten entered the creative track; after 103 days of competition, eight teams were selected as winners.

Winners presented their competition ideas and experiences. Canadian Academy of Engineering fellow Zhang Xiaoping summarized that talent is the decisive factor for the future, urging industry and academia to jointly cultivate outstanding talent through competitions and collaborative activities.

On the same day, Meituan drones launched the first university delivery route at Tsinghua Shenzhen, offering fresh juice and later expanding to fast food, Japanese cuisine, and other categories, enriching student consumption choices.

Mao noted that Meituan began drone delivery research in 2017, and after six years has completed autonomous flight drones, an intelligent scheduling system, and a high‑efficiency operation framework, with the new route now in operation.

The Meituan Robotics Institute, officially established in July 2022, aims to leverage Meituan’s service data and academic‑industry research strengths to drive key robot technology R&D, accelerate the conversion of research outcomes, and build an open collaborative innovation platform in the Greater Bay Area.