Preface

The 2026 Greater Bay Area International Maker Summit & Maker Faire Shenzhen is rallying around OPC, creating an annual stage for Makers worldwide to push the boundaries of what one person can build.

Makers are no longer just hobbyists. They are becoming super individuals who fuse AI, hardware, and real-world scenarios into working systems.

That is why we launched OPC Pioneer Stories, a series spotlighting the people at the heart of this year’s stage of hyper-evolution and capturing the defining moments when one person becomes a team.

We are not just telling stories about making things. We are documenting the hardcore journeys of those who are literally and figuratively soldering technology into reality.

The call for OPCs has sounded, and the stories of the pioneers are already unfolding.

If you have an OPC moment worth documenting and sharing, we invite you to submit your story.

Scan the QR code and tell us about your journey.

Now, without further ado, meet this edition’s OPC pioneers:

One person can be a whole team — pulling AI out of the screen, soldering it into hardware, and throwing it into the real world. Makers are no longer just hobbyists; they are super individuals capable of defining products and filling gaps in the market.

Ye Jichao’s “hyper-evolution” began in a lab in Hefei. A master’s graduate in Automation from the University of Science and Technology of China (USTC), he has spent eight years in robotics — working at the Harbin Institute of Technology Robotics Institute, the Jianghuainan Frontier Innovation Center, and AutoChips (formerly MediaTek) — and holds more than ten patents (with first-author credits on invention patents).

In August 2025, he pressed pause for himself, stepped out of a mature R&D system, and became a full-time maker. His goal was crystal clear: use technology to solve everyday pain points.

Technical Foundation: From the “MediaTek Lineage” to Going Solo

Ye Jichao’s technical background reads like a résumé of robotics: robot algorithms, embedded software and hardware, mechanical design, and host-computer design.

“I was already a maker while I was working.”

Outside of work, he made a habit of observing daily life and turning pain points into inventions. Before he resigned, he had a clear assessment of himself: a comprehensive technical skill set, with the ability to take a prototype all the way to a complete system independently. That gave him the confidence to give himself one year to bring all those ideas bottled up in his head to life.

After formally leaving his job in August 2025, he first tried his hand at being a tech content creator, sharing his projects and ideas on social platforms, gradually building a base of followers. Feedback from the traffic came quickly — the drawing robot he had developed drew attention, and customers came forward with clear needs.

So he went on to establish Hefei Qidian Xinghe Technology Co., Ltd., and focused on iterating this single product.

A corner of Ye Jichao’s studio

To date, he has successfully served more than a hundred clients. His business has stabilized, and he is steadily generating meaningful revenue.

Product Landing: “Welding” Digital Images onto Walls

Ye Jichao’s current core product is a full-domain cable-driven drawing system.

The system uses a dual-axis cable-driven parallel actuation architecture, backed by a suite of self-developed algorithms: cable-driven kinematics modeling, full-domain smooth trajectory planning, cable flexibility compensation, dynamic-diameter compensation, image parsing, and global path planning.

Ye Jichao’s full-domain cable-driven drawing system

The end result is the ability to convert digital images into physical paintings at equivalent scale, large format, and high precision.

Unlike the desktop plotters commonly seen on the market, this system’s application scenarios are far more “heavyweight”:

• Art education: making the complex drawing process visualizable and standardized;
• Artistic creation: helping artists complete large-format, high-precision works;
• Large-scale wall murals: solving the time- and labor-intensive challenge of hand-painting murals at scale, with consistent quality;
• Commercial art exhibitions: serving as an interactive installation or a centerpiece exhibit.

Asked about his original motivation, Ye Jichao gave a plain-spoken answer: “I didn’t think that much about it at first. I was just making something for my own kid to play with.”

This kind of “born out of a family need” motivation is the starting point shared by many great maker projects. But what truly kept this project “alive” was market feedback: once he realized people needed this system, he kept iterating, upgrading it from a toy into a commercially viable product.

Breaking Through: A Solo Closed Loop with AI Assistance

The development of the entire product was no smooth sailing.

On the technical side, he ran into many fields he had never touched before: mechanical design, host-computer design, website building, and complex path-planning algorithms.

As a seasoned engineer with eight years of experience, he relied on his deep robotics R&D foundation — together with AI tools and support from friends — to tackle each challenge one by one.

The resistance in bringing the product to market was even more concrete.

First, fragmented demand: “Customer needs are all over the place — there’s no way I can do everything myself.”

For now, he focuses his R&D energy on two core areas: art education and commercial art exhibitions.

Second, supply chain and after-sales: “Manufacturing and after-sales are a huge issue too — after all, the team’s strength is limited at this stage.”

As a typical OPC, he is trying — with an extremely small team in Hefei — to leverage a market that demands heavy service and heavy delivery.

Ye Jichao’s story is a classic sample of the OPC evolution from “technical expert” to “product definer.”

He did not leave technology behind. Instead, he pulled it out of papers and labs and welded it into the tension of cables, into the paint on walls. From making a toy for his child to founding a company that serves B2B clients, he has closed the loop.

If you would like to share your OPC ideas and experiences at China’s largest maker innovation celebration—and demonstrate how AI can truly become part of our work and everyday lives while solving real-world problems—this is your opportunity.

Let your project be seen by more peers, developers, partners, and potential customers, and allow new ideas to meet and grow here.

Scan the QR code below or click “Read the Original Article” at the end of the post to apply. Together, let us step into the era of OPC creators and unlock the infinite possibilities of the future!

Greater Bay Area International Maker Summit & Maker Faire Shenzhen 2026

Global Call for Makers Now Open

Application period: June 30–October 30, 2026

Event dates: December 12–13, 2026

P.S. Companies that reserved a booth last year do not need to submit another application. More participation opportunities will be announced soon—stay tuned!

Over the past 13 years, the development trajectory of Maker Faire Shenzhen can be seen as a microcosm of the development of maker culture in China.

• 2012: “Gathering Small Wisdom, Journeying through the Great Future” – This was the first Mini Maker Faire in China, with less than 1000 attendees, and was more like a gathering within a small circle. But we saw the infinite possibilities emerging from the maker community.

• 2013: The slogan was absent, and the maker community was still small. – In the OCT Creative Park, there were cross-disciplinary exchanges among different creative communities, silently laying the foundation for cultural output.

• 2014: “Innovate with China” – the event was upgraded to the Featured level for the first time, with a significant increase in scale compared to previous years, and the beginning of professional independent forums. This year, makers began to enter the public’s view.

• 2015: “Everyone is a Maker, what are you waiting for?” – This year’s Shenzhen International Maker Week became one of the largest Maker Faires in the world. This year, the concept of “maker” was elevated to a national level, and the trend of “mass innovation, mass entrepreneurship” swept across the country.

• 2016: “My World, My Creation” – As the sub-venue of the National Innovation and Entrepreneurship Week, the event was held for the first time in the commercial center area, experiencing unpredictable weather from typhoons to scorching heat. Many makers succeeded in your entrepreneurial endeavors this year, but it seemed like there were even more failures. The hype around entrepreneurship shifted towards rationality.

• 2017: “Makers, Go Pro” – The event took place at the university campus for the first time, focusing on Maker Pros and providing a platform for diverse innovators and makers to showcase themselves, presenting more possibilities for the growth path of makers to the entire community.

• 2018: “Co-making in the City” – The main venue of Shenzhen International Maker Week, where individuals and groups with shared visions and values gathered to showcase stories, projects, and explorations of collaboration among different communities and people.

• 2019: ” To the Heart of Community, To the Cluster of Industry” – The event was upgraded to the Maker Faire Shenzhen, attempting to attract professional audiences and focusing on pragmatic aspects such as solving the needs of industrial upgrading and co-developin. It aims to build a platform for innovation and industry dialogue and collaboration.

• 2023: “Where Are The Makers?”– Starting from our own mission and values, we aim to explore the future direction of makers and theapossibilities for commercialization. Though this question does not have a definitive answer, we do hope that through this event, we can communicate and share with every one of you, finding more ideas and directions together.

• 2024: “Everything is AI” – This year, we brought together over 120 exhibitors from around the world, attracting nearly 1,500 professional attendees from nearly 20 countries and over 20 provinces across China. The exhibition showcased a wide range of AI application projects and hosted 10 AI hardware-themed satellite events, alongside various workshops.

• 2025: “AI Without Boundaries, Everything Reimagined”The summit brought together nearly 100 international innovation ambassadors and showcased almost 1,000 AI hardware projects.Technology leaders, pioneering makers, industry experts, and university teams from more than 30 countries gathered to create an international innovation event combining frontier thinking, technical exchange, and cross-disciplinary collaboration.