(Yicai) March 3 -- Hubei province in Central China has released an industrial development plan to build a sensor industry cluster worth CNY30 billion (USD4.4 billion) over the next five years.

Hubei will cultivate around 100 high-quality intelligent sensor companies in Wuhan's Donghu New Technology Development Zone, known as Optics Valley, by 2030, according to a plan the local government released yesterday. This should also drive application industries to exceed CNY500 billion (USD72.5 billion).

A "Smart Sensor Industrial Park" will be built in the zone to cultivate and attract sensor firms in emerging industries, including embodied intelligent robots, low-altitude economy, intelligent connected vehicles, and future healthcare, covering force, flexible tactile, high-performance inertial navigation, medical, and other sensors, said Zhou Guangyong, deputy director of the zone's management committee. The aim is to drive the industry's transformation from "physical agglomeration" to "ecological integration," Zhou noted.

Sensors have been widely applied in industrial internet, intelligent equipment, new energy vehicles, and other sectors, noted Liu Liangbo, deputy director of Hubei's economic and information technology department, adding that they are the core foundation for achieving industrial digital and intelligent transformation.

Hubei has gathered over 100 companies in the upstream and downstream of the sensor industry with globally competitive products in infrared and temperature sensing, Liu stressed. Wuhan has formed a complete sensor supply chain covering design, manufacturing, packaging, testing, and system integration, which was worth about CNY21 billion last year, Liu said.

Wuhan set up a sensor industry innovation alliance last September, while cultivating interdisciplinary and multi-disciplinary compound sensor talents via cooperation between universities and firms and attracting Chinese and foreign high-level talents from the intelligent sensor technology area through various initiatives work in the city and start local businesses, Liu Huan, vice dean of Huazhong University of Science and Technology's School of Integrated Circuits, told Yicai.

Editors: Tang Shihua, Martin Kadiev