Tech giants start by disassembling systems

Chapter 42 Seminar

Thursday morning, December 26th.

Su Chen and Zhang Lei arrived at the academic lecture hall of the College of Engineering at South China Agricultural University with a HY-AG prototype and a laptop computer.

The lecture hall wasn't large, with about ten rows of seats and approximately forty people. The first row held Chen Hongyuan and several of his colleagues—all scholars in the fields of agricultural machinery and agricultural engineering. The middle rows were occupied by people from the provincial agricultural department, representatives from two agricultural machinery companies, and several large-scale farmers from Guangdong and Guangxi. The back rows were students.

Although the event was not large in scale, every participant was a real player in the field of plant protection.

Su Chen noticed Chen Hongyuan himself—in his fifties, with graying hair, not tall but very capable, and exuding a quiet sense of authority when sitting in the front row. His palms had obvious freckles, marks left from years of conducting experiments in the fields.

The first half was Chen Hongyuan's own report – "Technological Bottlenecks and Breakthrough Directions for Precision Agricultural Drones". He spent forty minutes systematically outlining the three major contradictions in the current agricultural drone industry – the mismatch between flight control precision and agricultural needs, the insufficient adaptability to different plots of land, and the gap between price and farmers' ability to pay.

Su Chen listened attentively from below the stage. Every piece of data Chen Hongyuan presented came from real-world testing, not from model estimations in academic papers. This kind of judgment, accumulated over thirty years of field experience, is something that cannot be obtained in a virtual dismantling lab.

The second half was Su Chen's live demonstration.

When Chen Hongyuan introduced Su Chen, he only used one sentence: "This is Mr. Su Chen, the general manager of Hongyuan Intelligent. I have seen the agricultural flight control solutions his team has developed, and I invited him to demonstrate them here today."

There is no exaggeration involved. It's just a statement of fact.

Su Chen did not make a PowerPoint presentation.

He opened his laptop and projected the screen onto the wall, displaying the interface of HY-AG's flight path planning software.

"Good morning, teachers. I won't be giving a report; I'll be going straight to a demonstration."

He turned to a large-scale farmer sitting in the third row: "Sir, are your fields regular or irregular?"

The person was somewhat surprised to be mentioned: "My home is in the mountainous area of ​​Guangxi, near Meizhou University of Technology. The fields there are all irregular terraced fields."

"Could you tell me the approximate coordinates of one of your fields? Just a rough estimate is fine, no need to be precise."

The large-scale farmer used a mobile phone map to find the approximate location of one of his terraced fields. Su Chen manually marked seven boundary points on the computer, outlining an irregular polygon.

Then I clicked the "Plan Route" button.

In less than two seconds, the algorithm generated a fully covered flight path—each route followed the internal contour of the polygon, without exceeding the boundary or missing any part of the path.

The lecture hall fell silent for a second.

Chen Hongyuan leaned forward slightly, staring at the flight path map on the screen.

"Mr. Su, regarding the boundary fitting of this algorithm—" His voice held a restrained excitement, "how did you handle the corners of the flight path? I see it seems to be doing adaptive fitting, rather than simple parallel truncation."

"Yes. Our algorithm automatically adjusts the flight path strategy at the edges based on the degree of irregularity, using curve compensation instead of hard cuts. This ensures that there is no excessive or insufficient precipitation at the edges."

Chen Hongyuan nodded, then turned to Zhang Lei and asked a more technical question—about the real-time linkage mechanism between flight route planning and Xishang traffic. Zhang Lei's answer was clear and concise, with every technical detail supported by actual measurement data.

After about half an hour of discussion indoors, Su Chen suggested moving the discussion outdoors.

Next to the lecture hall is an experimental field of about one acre in size, used by the College of Agriculture for testing various agricultural equipment. The field was clearly deliberately designed, with an irregular shape, curved boundaries, and a protruding rock in the middle as an obstacle.

Su Chen looked up at the sky—a light breeze, about level two. The conditions were much better than on the day of the maiden flight in Hunan.

Zhang Lei had already set up the HY-AG on the ridge of the field. The six rotors gleamed with a metallic sheen in the February Guangzhou sun.

Su Chen imported the boundary coordinates of the experimental field onto his computer. The algorithm then generated the flight path.

"start."

Zhang Lei pressed the start button.

The HY-AG lifted off the ground and hovered at a height of three meters. Then it began autonomous operations along the planned flight path.

The speed is uniform. Turns are clean. The sprinkling rhythm is stable. When passing over stone obstacles in the middle of the field, the machine automatically flies around them, maintaining the continuity of sprinkling.

Two minutes later, the operation was completed. The machine returned and landed.

At the edge of the field, a large-scale farmer squatted down to examine the spray marks on the ground, then stood up and said to the person next to him, "It's very even. There's not much spray around the edges."

Chen Hongyuan walked to Su Chen's side, his expression not changing much—but Su Chen noticed that there was a light in his eyes that was exactly the same as Liu Gang's back then.

"Mr. Su, I'd like to discuss a collaboration with you."

"Which direction?"

"My lab has over ten years of data on hilly fields in southern China—topography, soil, crop type, and standard pesticide application rates per acre. If this data can be combined with your flight control algorithms, it could significantly improve the spraying accuracy of your agricultural drones in complex terrain."

Su Chen's heart skipped a beat.

Data from over a decade of farmland in the hilly areas of southern China. This is gold.

The virtual disassembly lab can disassemble the technical architecture of any product, but it cannot generate real farmland environmental data. This database of real-world data, accumulated over more than a decade, is a resource that Su Chen cannot quickly obtain using any method.

"Professor Chen, I am very interested in this collaboration. We can discuss the specifics further."

Chen Hongyuan nodded: "I'll prepare a data list and send it to you first. You can assess which data can be used directly and which needs to be converted."

Concise, pragmatic, and without a single wasted word.

Su Chen enjoys dealing with this kind of person.

On the third day after returning from Guangzhou, Su Chen saw a news article that made him blink.

DJI announced a significant price reduction for its MG-1S agricultural drone, from 43,000 yuan to 25,000 yuan.

The price reduction exceeded 40%.

At the same time, DJI released a brand-new agricultural product user service system—including training, maintenance, financial leasing, and pesticide application links—clearly aiming to dominate the market.

Su Chen sat in his office, looking at the news on the screen, his fingers unconsciously tapping on the table.

This point in time was almost half a year earlier than his memories of his previous life.

DJI, in its previous life, didn't start large-scale price cuts until the second half of 2017. Now it's happened earlier, at the end of January—most likely because of that report from Hardcore Innovation.

The article, "From 120 Million to 2000 Units," explicitly mentioned Hongyuan's agricultural product deployment and its "flight control platform" strategy. DJI's strategy department clearly noticed this signal—a small company that had already proven its flight control capabilities in the consumer market was entering the agricultural product market—so DJI decided to act early and use price reductions to block the space for new entrants.

Twenty-five thousand yuan.

Su Chen's previous pricing strategy for HY-AG was between 15,000 and 18,000 yuan—much lower than DJI's, but enough to guarantee a reasonable profit.

DJI has now lowered the price to 25,000 yuan, leaving only a difference of 7,000 to 10,000 yuan between it and the HY-AG.

When the price difference narrows, farmers' choices will waver.

DJI has a brand, a service system, and a nationwide repair network. What does Hongyuan have? A prototype that has just completed its test flight, a partner with no production capacity yet, and a thin layer of brand awareness.

If it's just a matter of price, Hongyuan has no chance of winning.

But Su Chen showed no mercy.

Because he knew something DJI didn't—the ultimate competition in the agricultural product market is not hardware prices, but flight control ecosystems.

DJI's agricultural drones are closed systems—the flight controller and hardware are bundled together, meaning users can only buy the complete DJI drone. However, the hardware structure of agricultural drones isn't actually complex—many agricultural machinery manufacturers can make the frame, motors, and spraying systems. The only missing component is the flight controller.

If someone can provide a reliable flight control solution—not a complete drone, but a flight control solution that can be installed on various hardware platforms—then hundreds of small and medium-sized enterprises across the country that can make agricultural machinery but not flight control systems can all become manufacturers of agricultural drones.

Their combined production capacity and distribution channels will far exceed those of DJI alone.

This idea had been brewing in Su Chen's mind for a long time.

Now, DJI's price cuts have transformed what was once a vague idea into a strategy that must be implemented immediately.

Su Chen picked up the phone and dialed Zhang Lei's number.

"Zhang Lei, let's have a meeting this afternoon. I have an important decision to discuss with you."