30 years ago, Trustrobot's founder Jin Zili, like other students at Hefei University of Technology, enjoyed taking an evening stroll around Hugong Pond after dinner, sitting on a lakeside stone bench, lost in thought — gazing at the willows trailing over the silver pond, the "green tips just turning yellow," dreaming about his future. He felt anxiety, confusion, and anticipation. Back then, he never imagined he would switch from chemistry to CAD/CAM/CAE software development, let alone that one day, starting from Nanjing University of Science and Technology and Southeast University, over 50 universities across China offering robot engineering and industrial engineering programs — including his alma mater, Hefei University of Technology — would use his self-developed HedraCAM production line planning simulation and robot programming software platform for undergraduate training and graduate research projects. Previously, these university teaching and project platforms had long been the domain of international giants like Siemens NX, Tecnomatix, Dassault's Delmia, and Solidworks.
Trustrobot recently arranged engineers to install a batch of HedraCAM EDU education license authorizations for the School of Electrical and Automation Engineering at Hefei University of Technology, providing software operation and secondary development training, and helping faculty set undergraduate training objectives, build curriculum systems, and design teaching content. The project also provided API development interfaces for graduate students, offering a key integrated programming and simulation platform for the school's various vertical and horizontal development projects.
Foreign software has monopolized the Chinese market for years, starting by cultivating user habits from the student stage. Therefore, Trustrobot has always prioritized promoting applications in the education sector. In addition to numerous undergraduate institutions purchasing the software, the HedraCAM EDU education version is also distributed through education agents at various levels to secondary and higher vocational schools. Since signing with the first vocational education partner, Hangzhou Tianhuang Teaching Instruments, in 2016, through Q1 2023, nearly 20 more vocational education partners have joined, with cumulative installations exceeding 5,000 license authorizations (including OEM products). Under the wave of domestic industrial software substitution, the number of authorized installations continues to grow rapidly.
After exchanges with frontline educators, a common sentiment emerges: "Compared to pure educational simulation and digital twin software secondarily developed on platforms like Unity3D, which can only do visualization, HedraCAM — a commercially independent platform software continuously developed for enterprise applications — is more suitable for the education sector. The cloud-based model library contains not only numerous latest robot kinematics models available for download, but also various process machining single-station and automated production line layout configurations currently used by mid-to-high-end manufacturing enterprises. The machining processes and production line planning logic and methods in the software modules allow students and teachers to directly access the latest engineering technology from actual production processes, producing more practical talent that is more competitive in today's highly competitive job market.