Unlock new opportunities in lighting! Lu Yan: AI + Low-Altitude Economy, Rebuilding the Smart City Lighting Ecosystem

On February 11, the Fudan Light Salon, guided by the Lighting Alumni Association of Fudan University and hosted by China Light Network · Ming Classroom with support from Zhejiang Qicheng Electric Appliance Co., Ltd., successfully went live.

This session featured a sharing session by Ms. Lu Yan, an alumna of Fudan University, moderated by Hong Bing, Secretary-General of the Lighting Alumni Association of Fudan University, attracting numerous lighting industry professionals and Fudan alumni to participate online.

Host: Hong Bing

Background: The lighting industry is undergoing unprecedented transformation

Currently, the lighting industry is experiencing unprecedented change, with accelerated digital transformation, progress toward dual carbon goals, and upgrading consumer demand. Small and medium-sized enterprises are rapidly exiting the market, while megatrends toward consolidation in niche segments are becoming increasingly evident. Ms. Lu Yan’s presentation was grounded in this industry context, offering clear insights and practical guidance for companies seeking to find their direction and achieve innovative development amid these changes.

Guest Speaker Presentation

Decoding the Innovation Code Amidst Major Shifts in the Lighting Industry

Ms. Lu Yan, General Manager of the Lighting Product Line at Shenzhen Unilumin Technology and an alumna of Fudan University, delivered a talk titled “Innovation Amidst Industry Transformation.” Drawing on over twenty years of deep experience in the lighting sector and Unilumin’s practical explorations, she addressed three major innovation pillars—Smart, Green, Resilient—the value-upgrade path from products to solutions, and mindset innovation focused on breaking cognitive bottlenecks. Her presentation provided colleagues across the lighting industry with both theoretical depth and practical value.

Speaker: Lu Yan

Three Key Innovation Directions: Anchoring Smart, Green, and Resilient Solutions to Capture Core Drivers of Industry Development

Ms. Lu Yan emphasized that innovation in the lighting industry should not be aimless but rather focused on core priorities, concentrating corporate resources on critical tracks. Among them, Smart (Smarter), Green (Greener), Resilient (Safer) represent three pivotal innovation axes, especially crucial in outdoor lighting, and serve as key levers for companies seeking breakthroughs.

◇Smartification: Leveraging AI to Integrate Technologies and Build All-Scenario Intelligent Lighting Systems

The rapid global expansion of AI applications has opened up new opportunities for the smart transformation of the lighting industry. Ms. Lu Yan noted that China’s AI development ranks among the top three worldwide, with deepening applications in government services and manufacturing, providing both technological support and real-world scenarios for upgrading municipal lighting to smart systems.

Unilumin did not start from scratch in deploying AI; instead, leveraging its group-level technological strengths, it integrated AI technologies into practical applications, achieving maximum output with minimal investment. As the first company in the industry to earn Microsoft and Dell ISV certifications, Unilumin pioneered ChatGPT integration and combined AI with the HarmonyOS system, applying these advancements to core products such as smart streetlights and smart poles. Its AI-powered urban light display software platform holds Level III qualifications, enabling unified management of multifunctional pole facilities across entire cities. By fusing AI, IoT, and digital twin technologies, it covers transportation, municipal services, industrial parks, and other scenarios, supporting end-to-end management including equipment monitoring, energy consumption tracking, risk alerts, and intelligent dispatch.

In exploring the convergence of low-altitude economy and smart lighting, Ms. Lu Yan highlighted Unilumin’s core practice: transforming smart poles into ubiquitous, integrated nodes supporting the low-altitude economy. These poles not only integrate basic functions like environmental monitoring, security surveillance, and 5G communications but also expand capabilities to include drone landing pads, precision navigation, and dynamic data transmission, forming a closed-loop ecosystem of “Drone + Smart Pole + Digital Platform.”

For example, in the Nanshan Comprehensive Bonded Zone project in Shenzhen, smart poles have enabled automated drone takeoff and dispatch, applicable to inspection and logistics scenarios. Meanwhile, through 5G module connectivity with low-altitude control platforms, they provide real-time airspace data and safety warnings, working in tandem with intelligent lighting systems to offer comprehensive safeguards for low-altitude flights. Additionally, the Shenzhen Shenyen Road smart pole / traffic project, through multifunctional integration, has laid the groundwork for synergistic development between the low-altitude economy and urban transportation, making smart lighting a true foundational pillar for integrating smart cities and the low-altitude economy.

◇Greenization: Guided by Dual Carbon Goals, Achieving Sustainable Development Through Technological Breakthroughs and International Expansion

Carbon neutrality is a major global theme, posing core challenges for the lighting industry’s green transition. Ms. Lu Yan shared Unilumin’s green initiatives across three dimensions: technological upgrades, alignment with international standards, and application of new energy sources.

In terms of technological breakthroughs, Unilumin continues to focus on enhancing LED luminous efficacy. It formulates annual improvement plans targeting core factors such as chip photoelectric conversion efficiency and phosphor external quantum efficiency. By 2026, it aims to increase luminous efficacy by 0.5% for CRI 70 solutions and 1.5% for CRI 80 solutions. Currently, its solar streetlights achieve a whole-lamp efficacy of 220 lm/W, far exceeding the GB37478—2025 Class I energy efficiency standard for LED road and tunnel lighting. At the same time, Unilumin actively studies international green lighting standards, including Chile’s MMA standard and the U.S. Dark Sky certification, exploring the development of wildlife-friendly luminaires that balance lighting needs with ecological protection.

In the realm of new energy applications, Solar Lighting has become a key component of Unilumin’s green strategy. Its solar streetlights utilize high-efficiency, heavy-metal-free solar panels and lithium batteries, achieving zero carbon emissions while offering advantages such as low-voltage safety, no wiring required, and minimal maintenance. Whole-lamp efficacy can reach 210 lm/W, more than 10% ahead of peers, with products already deployed in South America, Southeast Asia, Africa, and other regions.

Furthermore, Unilumin leverages the green Belt and Road initiative to collaborate with partner countries on new energy projects, sharing “source-grid-load-storage” solutions and promoting the international outreach of green technology and equipment.

◇Resilience: Meeting Urban Development Needs to Build Disaster Resistance and Rapid Recovery Capabilities

Building resilient cities is a critical national priority, requiring urban infrastructure to withstand disasters, mitigate losses, and recover swiftly. As an essential part of urban infrastructure, lighting plays a key role in resilience-building efforts.

Ms. Lu Yan explained that lighting resilience goes beyond mere product reliability; it entails achieving citywide intelligent lighting and disaster-linked sensing. This ensures that lighting systems maintain basic functionality during emergencies while supporting daily operations, thereby aiding rapid urban recovery.

Unilumin’s smart highway (emergency) lighting solution and smart tunnel lighting solution represent typical examples of resilient lighting practices.

Notably, the smart highway (emergency) lighting solution was the sole winning project under the Ministry of Transport’s lighting challenge. Representative projects such as the Bati and Tianxin tunnels in Guangxi adopt systems characterized by low glare (T0 level) and high luminous efficacy (180 lm/W), enabling intelligent perception and linked control within tunnels. Combined with dynamically adjusted illumination based on environmental monitoring data, these systems significantly enhance tunnel safety and emergency response capabilities. Meanwhile, the Wuyuan Bridge low-level lighting project in Xiamen employs patented technologies such as high-uniformity, low-glare light distribution for low-level illumination and golden light fog lighting, greatly improving bridge lighting safety and emergency preparedness.

Unilumin’s lighting systems can also interconnect with urban emergency response frameworks, utilizing AI-driven decision-making and automated execution to enable cross-industry ecosystem collaboration, providing lighting support for resilient city construction.

Value Upgrade: From Single Products to All-Scenario Solutions, Escaping the Quagmire of Price Competition

Amid intensifying industry competition, simple product rivalry easily devolves into price wars. Transitioning from single-product supply to all-scenario solutions encompassing hardware, software, solutions, and services represents a critical pathway for companies to leapfrog in value and break free from price competition. This has been Unilumin Technology’s core strategic shift in recent years.

Ms. Lu Yan introduced that Unilumin Lighting has transformed into a comprehensive one-stop supplier integrating application consulting, solution design, optical simulation, construction, and operation & maintenance. Centered around the three main themes of smart, green, and resilient, it has developed five core solution categories: Smart Roads, Smart Tunnels, Smart Solar, Smart Highways (Emergency), Smart Poles. The cornerstone lies in using the AI light display platform as a foundation to bridge hardware-software barriers, striking a balance between customization and standardization.

Taking EMC (Energy Performance Contracting) business as an example, Unilumin does not merely provide cost-effective luminaires; instead, combining capital and technological strengths, it pursues win-win partnerships with clients, offering end-to-end services from lighting renovation and smart upgrades to long-term operation & maintenance. This approach ensures both high luminous efficacy and reliability of luminaires while achieving efficient ten-year maintenance through digital management. In the smart pole business, Unilumin has abandoned the simplistic “pole-building” mindset, placing “light” at the core. It integrates screens, cameras, sensors, 5G base stations, and other devices into multifunctional smart poles, managing data sharing and cross-departmental collaboration via a self-developed operation management platform to avoid redundant construction, ensuring smart poles truly serve as the nerve endings of smart cities.

Ms. Lu Yan emphasized that implementing solutions is not an overnight process; companies must focus on core tracks, perfecting one area before expanding to another, while identifying replicable deployment models to achieve scalable growth.

Mindset Innovation: Breaking Cognitive Bottlenecks to Achieve All-Round Upgrades Across Channels, Products, and Manufacturing

All technological innovation and value upgrades ultimately hinge on breakthroughs in human thinking. Ms. Lu Yan believes that the heart of corporate innovation lies in breaking through team cognition, particularly needing to dismantle entrenched mindsets on the channel side, product side, and manufacturing side to discover new paths aligned with corporate development.

◇Channel Side: Balancing Breadth and Depth, Focusing on High-Quality Customers for Co-Creation of Value

The essence of channel management is not simply pursuing broad coverage but finding a balance between breadth and depth. For engineering-oriented businesses like municipal lighting, depth is especially critical—identifying high-quality customers whose values align, carefully selecting and concentrating resources to serve them, and co-creating value rather than maintaining purely transactional relationships.

Ms. Lu Yan stated that becoming a customer’s core supplier hinges not on cost savings but on delivering enhanced value, penetrating higher tiers of the value chain, acting as a connector of value rather than competing for partners’ business. Simultaneously, leveraging Belt and Road opportunities for geographic expansion, identifying replicable channel models, and rapidly implementing them constitute important directions for channel-side innovation.

◇Product Side: Pushing Resources and Technology to Extremes While Balancing Downward Rooting and Upward Breakthroughs

Innovation on the product side essentially involves pushing resources and technology to their limits. On one hand, staying close to customers and suppliers, keenly sensing shifts in demand and technology to prevent R&D teams from working in isolation; on the other hand, technological iteration must balance downward rooting with upward breakthroughs—downward to stay attuned to the market, achieving high cost-performance ratios to meet mainstream demands; upward to lead in niche segments through dedicated R&D investment in high-value-added products, guiding industry development.

Additionally, resource aggregation and exploration are paramount—uniting quality supplier partners while keeping internal R&D teams focused on core directions to avoid resource dispersion.

◇Manufacturing Side: Centering on Delivery, Quality, and Efficiency to Achieve Seamless Front-to-Back Coordination

95% of Unilumin Technology’s lighting products are custom projects, with domestic custom orders requiring delivery within 7–15 days, placing extremely high demands on manufacturing efficiency and quality. Ms. Lu Yan stated that manufacturing innovation is not simply “replacing humans with machines,” but rather centering on delivery, quality, and efficiency to achieve seamless front-to-back coordination.

Breaking down silos among R&D, sales, production, and other departments to form collaborative teams, rather than each department striving for its own “perfect piece,” and using efficient process integration to deliver flawless products and solutions quickly with minimal personnel—this is the key to breaking through on the manufacturing side.

Interactive Q&A

Focusing on Practical Pain Points to Address Industry Concerns

Following the presentation, Ms. Lu Yan provided detailed answers to real-world questions raised by the audience, offering practitioners concrete practical references:

1. Can indoor residential spotlights and similar products achieve a luminous efficacy breakthrough above 120 lm/W?

Ms. Lu Yan explained that from a technical standpoint, indoor and outdoor lighting share common technological platforms, so achieving over 120 lm/W is feasible. However, due to requirements for beam angles, spotlight efficiency may suffer slight losses. More importantly, indoor lighting does not solely pursue luminous efficacy; compared to the efficacy-driven nature of public lighting, indoor lighting places greater emphasis on light effects, health, and comfort. It represents a fusion of lighting technology with aesthetics and architecture, where luminous efficacy serves only as a baseline indicator—the core lies in the overall lighting experience.

2. What are the core strengths and weaknesses of Chinese lighting companies compared to international peers in the innovation areas of smart, green, and resilient technologies?

The core strength lies in flexibility and speed. Chinese companies dare to experiment and respond rapidly to market changes, able to quickly trial and adjust even with limited certainty—something international firms struggle to match. The weakness, however, resides in systematic standardized management. Centuries-old international giants like Philips and Osram have reached peak sophistication in standardized management and procedural frameworks, achieving maximum results with minimal personnel. Chinese companies need to strike a balance between standardization and efficiency, exploring development models suited to their own circumstances rather than blindly copying international approaches, always clarifying “who we are and where we’re headed.”

3. When engaging with city-level projects, how does Unilumin balance customized solution needs with efficient large-scale implementation? Are there any memorable cases?

The core to balancing customization and scalability lies in platform-based product deployment. During the R&D and rollout of solar lighting products, Unilumin encountered scattered customization demands. Subsequently, by establishing a platformized system on the R&D side, aggregating common customer needs into core modules, and then fine-tuning according to region-specific preferences (Southeast Asia, Middle East, South America, etc.), it achieved “standardized core modules, customized personalized needs.” For instance, Philips’ driver products globally adopt standardized core module designs, with adaptation adjustments made only for different markets like Europe, China, and South America. Domestic company Inventronics has also adopted a similar approach, a model worth emulating. Furthermore, gathering requirements at the client end reduces fragmented custom development, boosting large-scale implementation efficiency.

4. For small and medium-sized enterprises in the lighting industry, what is the easiest entry point for mindset innovation with the highest return on investment?

The core of mindset innovation for SMEs lies in open-source strategies—targeted openness rather than blind expansion. The most accessible approach is to deeply bond with core business partners, listen to their needs, co-research, co-create solutions, and then replicate these proven solutions with new partners and clients, dramatically increasing chances of success. SMEs do not need to copy large enterprise models or chase entirely new innovations; starting from familiar customers and established tracks to find a development rhythm suited to their own pace offers the highest ROI.

Conclusion

With a Free Spirit, Upholding an Aspiring Heart

Concluding her remarks, Ms. Lu Yan invoked the Fudan spirit etched in the bones of every alumnus: “Free yet Purposeful.” She stated that “A Free Spirit, An Aspiring Heart” embodies the spiritual core of Fudan people and the steadfast commitment lighting industry professionals should maintain on their journey of innovation. Amidst profound industry transformations, only by preserving unwavering dedication to innovation and passion for the field, continuously breaking cognitive bottlenecks, can we stand firm amidst change.

This edition of the Fudan Light Salon drew upon Ms. Lu Yan’s more than twenty years of industry experience and Unilumin Technology’s frontline practices to clearly outline innovative pathways amid dramatic shifts for colleagues across the lighting sector. From technological innovations in smart, green, and resilient domains, to value upgrades from products to solutions, and further to mindset breakthroughs on the channel, product, and manufacturing sides, every insight offered was packed with actionable wisdom—providing direction for large enterprises’ growth while illuminating paths for SMEs’突围.

Innovation is the eternal driving force behind industry development and the core code for corporate breakthroughs. Under the confluence of digitalization, dual carbon goals, and resilient city construction, the lighting industry must hoist innovation as its sail, wield technology as its oar, and steer with mindset as its rudder to ride the waves of transformative currents and advance alongside the world.

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Note: This article is compiled from the recording of Ms. Lu Yan’s February 11, 2026, presentation titled “Innovation Amidst Industry Transformation” at Ming Classroom, organized and published by Ming Classroom.

Click here for the course replay