Drones have found wider adoption across China in industrial applications such as electric safety inspection, emergency response, firefighting and forest patrol.
Built wholly with carbon fiber, these ships feature a light weight and a modular design, making them a cut above 90% of the similar unmanned boats in the world, according to Liang.
The market size is projected to hit US$23 billion by the end of this year, with industrial paint-spray robots taking US$16 billion and their variants in the service segment generating US$7 billion.
Amid a slowing domestic economy, China's material handling robots have largely bucked the trend, showing their resilience and potential in the manufacturing, warehousing and logistics sectors.
Over the past decade, the industrial city has come to possess a complete robotic industrial chain spanning the manufacturing of key parts, robotic bodies and system integration.
iFlytek's remarks came as the company, better known for its speech recognition technologies and a series of AI-powered smart gadgets, announced a foray in October into smart household cleaning gadgets.
The firm looks to further embrace the advent of artificial general intelligence (AGI) by deploying its AI capabilities to upgrade physical technologies like robotics.