AI-Empowered Intelligent Drone Manufacturing

A Industrial Revolution from “Manufacturing” to “Smart Manufacturing”

Inside the workshop of Newleda Technology in Dongkeng Town, Dongguan, a drone core board is taking shape through the precise coordination of robotic arms and AI vision systems. What once required dozens of skilled workers and several days to complete can now be finished in just a few hours.

The global drone industry is experiencing explosive growth. By 2030, the global commercial drone market is expected to exceed USD 583.5 billion, with a compound annual growth rate of 38.6%. Such massive demand has made traditional labor-intensive, “people-surrounding-machines” production models increasingly unsustainable.

At the 2025 World Drone Congress, United Aircraft Group’s Boying T1400 heavy-lift drone secured 1,300 intended orders in a single event. Orders of this scale would be extremely difficult to fulfill using conventional manufacturing methods, where both capacity and cost control become major constraints.

At this critical moment of industrial transformation, companies such as Dongguan Newleda Technology Co., Ltd. are redefining drone manufacturing through AI-powered automation solutions.

---

01 Industry Wave: Drone Market Expansion and the Transformation of Manufacturing Models

As market demand surges, the limitations of traditional production models are becoming increasingly apparent. Precision components such as drone core boards require extremely high assembly accuracy, while conventional vision systems often struggle with reflective surfaces and transparent materials, leading to misjudgments during inspection.

Growth in the Chinese market is equally striking. By 2029, China’s commercial drone market is expected to reach RMB 300 billion. To capture this enormous opportunity, drone manufacturers urgently need more efficient and intelligent production methods.

Dongguan, a major manufacturing hub in the Guangdong–Hong Kong–Macao Greater Bay Area, is home to 528 low-altitude-related enterprises, forming a complete industrial ecosystem spanning drone manufacturing, electronic components, and supporting industries.

The demand for industrial transformation has given rise to professional automation solution providers like Newleda Technology, who are becoming key drivers of drone industry upgrading.

---

02 Technical Strengths: Multi-Dimensional Breakthroughs Enabled by AI

At the technological foundation level, hardware innovation and algorithmic breakthroughs act as dual driving forces. Edge computing modules equipped with NPUs now offer 20× the computing density of 2020, and when combined with lightweight Transformer models, reduce 1080P image processing latency to under 50 ms, eliminating reliance on cloud computing.

The maturity of edge intelligence enables drones to achieve 98% target recognition accuracy in complex environments. In power line inspection, drones can even detect insulator cracks as small as 2 mm, demonstrating the tangible value of AI empowerment.

AI also delivers significant advantages in the drone manufacturing process itself. The collaboration between Kobotix and DeepSeek showcases the power of technological integration, where their jointly developed system improved dynamic drone modeling efficiency by 300%, generating high-precision 3D real-world models in just 20 minutes.

Newleda Technology has also achieved breakthroughs in addressing manufacturing challenges. To overcome the difficulty of identifying reflective and transparent objects, the company introduced hybrid deep AI vision technology, giving machines “intelligent vision” capable of accurately recognizing such materials.

---

03 Industrial Value: Dual Improvements in Efficiency and Quality

AI-enabled automation solutions bring multiple benefits to drone manufacturers. Automated production significantly reduces quality fluctuations caused by human factors, elevating product consistency and reliability to a new level.

According to industry data, an automated production line can reduce direct labor requirements by approximately 70%, while lowering defect rates to one-tenth of those in traditional manufacturing.

At United Aircraft’s Harbin base, an automated pulse production line increased efficiency tenfold, boosting annual output from 100 units to 1,000 units under the same space and labor conditions.

Material flow and quality traceability are equally critical in fully automated lines. Newleda Technology’s AMR logistics system, equipped with intelligent path planning and obstacle avoidance, enables safe and efficient material transport within complex workshop environments.

---

04 Technical Challenges: The Reality of AI-Driven Drone Manufacturing

Despite its advantages, AI-enabled drone manufacturing still faces significant challenges. In dense urban environments, high-rise buildings block GNSS signals and create multipath effects, reducing navigation accuracy.

During power line inspection, electromagnetic interference from high-voltage lines can disrupt low-altitude intelligent systems, causing anomalies in flight control sensor data. In harsh environments such as coal mining and chemical plants, innovative aerodynamic designs, power systems, and thermal management solutions are required to meet extreme operating conditions.

Additionally, applications such as urban flood monitoring require low-altitude systems to process fused visual and radar data, demanding advanced environmental perception and multimodal data fusion capabilities—areas that still need accelerated development.

At their core, these challenges revolve around achieving end-to-end intelligence across perception, decision-making, and control in complex environments. Traditional air traffic management systems were designed around large, manned aircraft over more than a century; developing the low-altitude economy requires breaking through these established paradigms.

Talent shortages also pose a major challenge. Low-altitude AI is a highly interdisciplinary field, and the gap in professional and cross-disciplinary expertise must be addressed urgently.

---

05 Newleda Technology: AI Innovation Across Seven Automation Systems

Founded by former DJI R&D engineers, Newleda Technology transforms airborne intelligence into ground-level manufacturing intelligence. The company specializes in non-standard automation, providing full-chain automation solutions for the drone industry—from components to complete aircraft.

Through continuous R&D, Newleda has built a comprehensive drone automation equipment portfolio covering every stage from core components to final assembly.

Seven Core Automation Systems by Newleda Technology

---

06 Future Outlook: From Drone Smart Manufacturing to Embodied Intelligence

As technology advances, the future of automated drone manufacturing continues to expand. Deep integration of generative AI will enable robots to autonomously plan and execute diverse tasks in real time, without human intervention.

Newleda Technology is exploring the democratization of multifunctional vision platforms, allowing manufacturers to reconfigure camera capabilities through software updates and quickly adapt to changing production requirements.

Meanwhile, cost-optimized core strategies will allow advanced 3D camera technologies to be deployed across broader industrial applications.

Leveraging its expertise in drone automation manufacturing, Newleda is extending its technological strengths into the emerging field of embodied intelligent robotics.

The company has already entered new product domains, developing frameless rotary and linear motors for humanoid robot joints. Combined with control boards and absolute magnetic encoders or resolvers, these components deliver servo-level precision output, forming the foundation for high-performance motion control in embodied intelligence systems.

Across the drone industry, expanding application scenarios continue to drive manufacturing demand—from logistics and agriculture to emergency response and power inspection—reshaping multiple industries.

Dongguan, as a key region in the low-altitude economy, plans to create at least 100 demonstration application scenarios within the next year. This virtuous cycle between “scenarios” and “markets” provides sustained momentum for drone automation manufacturing.

Above the waterways of Dongguan, a logistics drone travels along the Greater Bay Area’s first commercial low-altitude customs transport route, reaching Guangzhou’s Huangpu Bonded Zone in just 10 minutes. Hours earlier, its core board was undergoing final inspection at Newleda Technology’s workshop.

Inside the factory, AMR vehicles move seamlessly between stations, delivering materials on time. Robotic arms continue precise operations along the core board assembly line, while newly completed drones undergo final system testing nearby.

From precision assembly to comprehensive testing, every process tells the story of China’s continuous breakthroughs in intelligent manufacturing.