HANGZHOU, China, April 3, 2026 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) — The spring tea season has arrived, and in Zhejiang’s West Lake Longjing production area — one of China’s most prized tea regions —DEEP Robotics has been sent robot dogs work. The job? Dragging freshly picked tea leaves down the mountain so farmers don’t have to. Together with JD Logistics the four-legged friend robotics solutions try to solve a problem that has haunted premium tea production forever: getting delicate pre-Ming leaves off steep, narrow mountain trails to the processing workshops quickly enough. You have about an hour before the leaves start to shed, which makes them special.
LYNX M20 wheeled robot transforms into ‘cyber tea farmer’ at the forefront of agricultural assistance
LYNX M20 wheeled robot transforms into ‘cyber tea farmer’ at the forefront of agricultural assistance
At the Longwu standardized tea plantation in Hangzhou, DEEP Robotics‘ robot dogs have picked up a nickname here: “cyber tea farmers.” The AI-powered robots carry baskets of fresh tea leaves down the winding hills, straight to the “first mile” bottleneck that has always delayed the spring tea harvest. The whole idea behind putting robotics in the tea picking supply chain is simple enough: do things faster, save the backs of farmers and bring this age-old trade one step closer to digitalization.
The way it has worked for centuries: farmers tie up heavy bamboo baskets and trudge up and down narrow, winding mountain paths that can be really dangerous. It’s grueling work. And with fewer and fewer young people willing to do this – rural labor shortages are now a real phenomenon – productivity has barely increased. That’s where the robot dogs come in.
LYNX M20 robot with wheels and legs deftly navigates narrow paths while transporting fresh leaves
LYNX M20 and X30 robots navigate 50cm paths and 45° slopes for fresh leaf transport
Two DEEP Robotics’ There are models in the tea fields right now. One of them is the LYNX M20 with wheels robotand the other is the X30 four-legged friend robot. They can fit through passages as narrow as 50cm and climb slopes of up to 45°, weaving between tea rows with ease. Mud, rocks, wet stone steps: none of that slows them down. They just keep going, basket after basket, trip after trip down the mountain. Because they are so agile, the robots actually getting the freshly picked leaves from where they were picked all the way to the workshops, without the usual delays.
LYNX M20 robot with wheels and legs effortlessly climbs steps while transporting fresh leaves
A race against time: hacking a thousand-year-old chokepoint
For West Lake Longjing tea, the saying goes: “pre-Ming tea is as precious as gold.” It’s not just a matter of speaking: the harvest period is incredibly tight. Once picked, the fresh leaves must reach the workshop within an hour, otherwise the flavor will begin to slip away. But the hills here are no joke. Winding paths, narrow paths, steep slopes. Removing leaves by hand has always been slow and tiring. So the arrival of DEEP Robotics‘ robot dogs changes the math. It is a solution that really works in practice.
The machines now process the heaviest physical part of the harvest. Farmers are not injured, transport times are much shorter and – crucially – the tea retains more of its premium quality because it is processed faster.
Building a smart ecosystem for rural communities
The Hangzhou operation is just one part of something bigger: a smart ecosystem that spans the entire tea picking supply chain. The whole point: “picked, collected and shipped on the same day.” The robots make that possible by shortening the time between harvest and processing, preserving the freshness that Longjing spring tea is known for. DEEP Robotics and JD Logistics have put together a “picked today, shipped today” delivery pipeline, and so far it’s working.
None of this is exactly new territory DEEP Roboticsalthough. The company first entered agriculture with a public welfare harvest project in Chongqing, where it helped harvest pickled mustard tubers in Fuling. robotics technology took care of the hard work of moving crops from muddy fields so farmers didn’t have to do it all by hand.
DEEP Robotics has always been about solving real problems – not just building cool technology. The next step: more agricultural applications, more industries and more robotic solutions that actually hold up when it counts. Industrial inspection, agriculture, food supply chains – they all want to be involved.
About DEEP Robotics
DEEP Robotics has been in existence since 2017. It is a nationally recognized high-tech enterprise in China, engaged in R&D, production, sales and service for quadrupedal robots, humanoid robots and core components. The company has developed what it calls a “perception-decision-action” technology and is now conducting large-scale deployments in energy, emergency response, industrial environments and education. In 2025, DEEP Robotics claimed the No. 1 global market share for quadrupedal robot industry applications. As of March 2026, the products are active in more than 1,200 industry scenarios in 50 countries and regions.
Media contact
Company: DEEP Robotics
Contact person: Vivian Chen
E-mail: chenlingjia@deeprobotics.cn
Website: https://www.deeprobotics.cn/en
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