(Yicai) Sept. 18 -- Shares of Fulongma Group surged by the exchange-imposed daily trading limit after the leading Chinese supplier of environmental sanitation equipment announced a partnership with Huawei Technologies to develop autonomous driving technologies for sanitation vehicles.

Fulongma [SHA: 603686] closed up 10 percent at CNY15.47 (USD2.30) in Shanghai today.

Huawei Cloud Computing Technology will exclusively develop and deploy a self-driving system for sanitation vehicles for Fulongma for CNY200 million (USD29.9 million), the Longyan-based firm announced yesterday, citing a three-year technical service contract. The system will include cloud-based and vehicle-end software, as well as intelligent hardware solutions.

The partnership, which also involves technical development and research on intelligent transformations, drive-by-wire optimizations, and cloud adaptations, aims to expand the use of autonomous driving technology in Fulongma’s sanitation vehicle products and strengthen its digital and intelligent capabilities.

Building on this foundation, Huawei Cloud will lead the adaptation and validation of self-driving algorithm software for Fulongma's three- and six-ton payload sanitation vehicle models for sweeping and washing scenarios. This will enable a closed-loop data link, allowing for model algorithms to be incrementally trained and continuously iterated.

Huawei Cloud will also help Fulongma enhance its research and development capabilities for autonomous driving solutions, preparing for the technical and operational integration needed to commercialize unmanned sanitation vehicles in the future.

This collaboration does not involve the transfer of technology. The partnership results will grant Fulongma a non-exclusive, general-use license from Huawei, which cannot be sublicensed or redistributed. Fulongma will not be required to pay additional licensing fees to use the R&D results.

Huawei will own the models obtained through incremental training on Fulongma's data. Fulongma will be able to access the results by subscribing to Huawei Cloud's public cloud sanitation autonomous driving services.

This exclusive technical collaboration is an important strategic initiative for Fulongma's intelligent upgrade of its sanitation equipment business, the firm noted.

By leveraging the respective industrial advantages of the two parties, Fulongma will rapidly enhance its end-to-end autonomous sanitation driving system capabilities, leading to the launch of unmanned sanitation equipment products with advanced autonomous driving features. This, in turn, will improve the core competitiveness and differentiation advantages of the company's products.

This collaboration will also establish a joint R&D and joint marketing assurance mechanism. While accelerating technology iteration and product implementation, the two firms will work together to expand the smart sanitation equipment market.

Fulongma previously attempted to develop unmanned sanitation products and achieved demonstration operations and small-scale commercial sales. Its sales revenue from this business reached CNY9.9 million (USD1.5 million) last year and nearly CNY5 million (USD738,880) in the first half of this year.

Editor: Futura Costaglione