As the golden autumn arrives, Xinjiang, which accounts for over 90% of China’s cotton output, enters its cotton harvesting season. Cotton pickers crisscross the vast cotton fields north and south of the Tianshan Mountains, accurately harvesting and compressing snow-white cotton bolls into bales. The old scene of "bending over to pick cotton" is a thing of the past. Recently, at Huaxing Farm in the Changji National Agricultural High-Tech Industrial Demonstration Zone of Xinjiang, this modern harvesting landscape has been further enhanced by technology — Xinjiang’s first "unmanned farm" has officially kicked off its autumn harvest operations. Here, the upgrade from mechanization to intelligentization has been realized: instead of busy agricultural machine operators, there are fleets of smart agricultural machinery equipped with CAS-Power’s Zhiyun Unmanned Agricultural Machinery Operation System. A highly technological autumn harvest is unfolding here, injecting strong impetus into the development of smart cotton fields in Xinjiang.

 

Stepping into the cotton fields, the intelligent operation scene is striking. Cotton pickers installed with the Zhiyun System move in an orderly manner across the fields. Relying on the system’s precise path planning and centimeter-level positioning capabilities, they seamlessly complete tasks such as automatic row alignment, autonomous driving, and automatic harvesting, with flexible and smooth turning. Near the cotton pickers, unmanned plastic film recyclers follow closely, simultaneously crushing cotton stalks for field return and rolling up plastic films into bales. After the plastic film recycling is completed, unmanned plowing tractors quickly enter the field to loosen the soil, followed by land-leveling equipment towed by unmanned tractors that take over the work. These machines accurately level the farmland, preparing it for the next year’s cultivation. The entire process fully demonstrates the operational advantages of intelligence, precision, and efficiency.

 

Behind this operation mode lies the technical support of CAS-Power’s Zhiyun Unmanned Agricultural Machinery Operation System. Equipped with a Beidou-based centimeter-level integrated positioning unit, the system enables high-precision positioning. Combined with an intelligent planning system, it can intelligently control agricultural machinery according to the type of equipment and agronomic requirements, optimize operation trajectories, maximize farmland utilization, and improve operational efficiency and energy-saving effects. At the same time, the system is equipped with an active safety unit, which can realize long-distance early warning and short-distance obstacle stopping/avoidance to ensure operational safety. Its highly integrated and integrated electromechanical unit supports non-destructive and reversible installation and rapid calibration, making it compatible with various types of agricultural machinery.

 

Currently, this "unmanned farm" has achieved full-process intelligent operations covering the entire cotton production chain from "plowing, sowing, management to harvesting". Through the collaboration between the Zhiyun System and the farm’s "smart brain", it not only enables autonomous collaborative operations of unmanned agricultural machinery fleets but also realizes precise agricultural decision-making through digital twin technology — such as predicting fertilization time and accurately controlling fertilizer dosage. This promotes the transformation of agricultural production from "relying on experience" to "relying on technology", providing a replicable model for the development of smart cotton fields in Xinjiang and even the modernization of agriculture across China.