Image from the WeChat account of China Ship Scientific Research Center

On July 8, 2026, the National Science and Technology Award Conference was held in Beijing. The Fendouzhe full-ocean-depth manned submersible project, in which the Shenyang Institute of Automation (SIA) of the Chinese Academy of Sciences participated as the second completing unit, won the Special Prize of the National Science and Technology Progress Award. Among the project contributors, Professor-Level Senior Engineer ZHAO Yang, Professor-Level Senior Experimentalist ZHU Puqiang, Associate Research Fellow ZHAO Bing, and Associate Research Fellow YANG Mingyu ranked 6th, 11th, 17th, and 42nd, respectively.

For the Fendouzhe project, SIA developed the submersible’s control system, enabling Fendouzhe to set a Chinese manned deep-diving record of 10,909 meters in the Mariana Trench.

In recent years, SIA has undertaken multiple major tasks related to the development and production of manned submersible control systems. Going forward, the institute will continue to deepen its research on intelligent control systems for manned submersibles, persistently improving the independent and controllable level of China’s manned deep-diving equipment and its deep-sea operational capabilities. SIA also developed the domestically-built manipulator for Fendouzhe, providing support for the submersible’s scientific expedition missions.

In addition, the project “Theory for the Delineation of Complex Deep-sea Geographic Entities and Precision Detection Technology & Applications,” in which SIA participated as the fourth completing unit, won the Second Class Prize of the National Science and Technology Progress Award. Professor-Level Senior Engineer XU Huixi was one of the main contributors to this project.

For this project, SIA developed the Qianlong-4 autonomous underwater vehicle (AUV), which helped solve the challenge of precise detection of deep-sea geographic entities and promoted the overall progress of China’s science and technology for seabed geographic entity detection and delineation. XU Huixi was responsible for the overall design and key R&D advancements of the AUV.