Wuhan Economic Development Zone's media centre reported that on 20 August a battery-powered cleaning boat cruised Wanjia Lake on its own, avoided obstacles, planned its route and cleaned the water, before a worker sent it back to the pier from a phone1. Hubei Yizhou Zhihang Technology and Wuhan University of Technology built the first-generation boat, more than three metres long, with RTK positioning, meaning real-time kinematic satellite fixes accurate to centimetres, an industrial computer, visual fusion and an ultrasonic depth sounder.
Only local government reporting carries this account. No company release, test record or independent technical report was located, and the stated operating duration of four to five hours comes from company representatives rather than from a measured trial2. Every capability in the description, the route planning, the obstacle avoidance and the recall, rests on that single source, and a reader should hold them at that weight.
A lake-cleaning boat costs little, moves slowly and works in sheltered water a few metres deep, so a mistake strands a hull rather than losing a vehicle or causing a collision at sea. Municipal water maintenance is therefore where a young autonomy stack gets its hours cheaply, which is the same reason harbours and inland waterways have run ahead of open-ocean autonomy everywhere else.
A described plan to work across 26 lakes is a demonstration plan and not a deployment. Nothing in the report states a contract, a purchase or a second boat.
