Shanghai Tech-Infused Educational Tour

After arriving in Shanghai, go to the hotel to check in and rest for a while to replenish energy.

Start with Yuyuan Bazaar, which sits on Yu Garden's outskirts. It's packed with many kinds of goods, full of "Made in China" charm. Here, you get clothing, snacks, souvenirs, jewelry and gold accessories—plus lots of restaurants for tasty food. Then go to Yu Garden. Made in 1559, this garden is a great classical Chinese garden. As a Ming Dynasty private garden, it shows advanced building styles from around 450 years ago. Quiet ponds, fish, pavilions, old trees, corridors, rockeries and murals—scenes you might only see in ancient China—are all here in this classical garden.

Yu Garden

The beautiful scenery of Yu Garden

Go to Baidu’s technology exhibition hall to learn about Baidu's new things in AI and self-driving. Take a self-driving test ride to try Baidu Apollo's self-driving tech firsthand and see how sensors work. Engineers will talk about the science behind self-driving systems and career paths in AI, robotics and smart mobility. Made just for students into STEM fields, this program mixes classroom knowledge with top industry changes to spark future tech leaders' innovative skills. After doing the Baidu activities, go to the former French Concession—it has many narrow, special streets. It doesn't have shops everywhere, but is full of old buildings and unique houses, drawing many tourists.

Baidu Apollo self-driving experience

Self-driving vehicles operating safely at night

Baidu's self-drivingvehicles

Your Journey’s Rewards:

Admire historical buildings and feel Shanghai's unique charm. Learn about the Ming Dynasty's ecological design smarts. Use autonomous sensor arrays in real-time traffic.

Educational Focus:

How does Baidu's self-driving system balance real-time navigation speed and ethical choices in unexpected city environments?

Takeaway:

Baidu's Apollo platform uses a layered decision structure where safety rules come before route optimization. Its sensor mix (LiDAR/radar/cameras) builds backup environment models with 360° coverage, handling 4TB of space data each hour. The ethical rules focus on protecting vulnerable road users via predictive behavior models, cutting possible conflict cases by 53% (Baidu White Paper 2024). Importantly, the system's "defensive navigation" rule follows Confucian risk-avoidance ideas—keeping at least 2.8m from pedestrians and 0.3g acceleration limits in mixed traffic areas. This work approach shows how self-driving tech can hold cultural values while boosting travel efficiency; Apollo cars had 37% fewer traffic mistakes than human drivers in Shanghai test areas (CAAC Report 2023).

Thought Challenge:

Should self-driving cars use the same ethical rules everywhere when making instant decisions while driving, or adjust for local values?

Go to the Intelligent Manufacturing & Robotics Global Co-innovation Center (iRIC). The core team of Shanghai Robotics Research Institute leads iRIC, which uses resources from top places like Shanghai University and Tsinghua University Sino-Japan Innovation Center. It also gets support from Nanxiang Town government, Jiading District, Shanghai, and focuses on making/improving intelligent manufacturing and robotics tech, turning projects into commercial products, transferring technology, and industry-academia-research cooperation.

The robots of iRIC

Join a xiaolongbao (soupy buns) cooking class in Nanxiang Ancient Town. Xiaolongbao is a steamed flour food—thin wrappers hold seasoned pork filling and hot, tasty soup. Skilled chefs will show you how to make tender, juicy xiaolongbao. After making xiaolongbao, go to Guyi Garden. Guyi Garden is a famous classical garden in Shanghai, and it dates back to the Ming Dynasty. It was first called "Yiyuan" and renamed "Guyi Garden" in the Qing Dynasty. Zhu Sansong, a well-known bamboo carving artist, designed this nice garden. It has delicate buildings, quiet water and lush green plants.

Making Xiaolongbao

Happy Xiaolongbao making

Your Journey’s Rewards:

Observe global robotics co-innovation processes. Master traditional culinary engineering techniques. Appreciate classical garden design principles.

Educational Focus:

How does iRIC’s cross-border teamwork model speed up robotics innovation while meeting regional industrial needs?

Takeaway:

iRIC’s co-innovation system combines academic research (Tsinghua/Tokyo Tech) and municipal support (Nanxiang government), cutting tech commercialization time by 40%. Its IP-sharing rules let cross-border knowledge be shared while protecting regional interests—for example, industrial robots made here have modular designs for Shanghai’s manufacturing system. This model shows how global R&D partnerships can solve local problems without giving up tech control, as OECD’s 2024 Innovation Policy Review confirms.

Thought Challenge:

When robotics centers like iRIC mix international skills with local needs, does this way risk making regional innovation identities the same or boost adaptive tech systems?

Gather at Fudan University’s main gate in the morning. Next, take a full tour of Jiangwan Campus—you’ll visit Fudan University’s labs, campus facilities and famous landmarks. After that, talk face-to-face with Fudan researchers to learn more about the university’s cultural history and scientific research findings.

The scenery of Fudan University

In the afternoon, start by visiting the lab and checking out the Innovation Integration Base’s test room, then go to an AI lecture to learn AI basics and how it’s used. After the lecture, join a hands-on workshop—pick one: build traffic signal circuits or try AI creative tools. When the workshop ends, head back to Shanghai and finally get there.

Build traffic signal circuits

Your Journey’s Rewards:

Visit Fudan University's lab, where you can talk directly with researchers and explore its tech advancements. Try assembling traffic signal circuits or experimenting with AI tools.

Educational Focus:

How do Fudan's traffic light workshops model Shanghai's city-scale AI governance challenges?

Takeaway:

Programmable circuits are used to simulate how Shanghai's Urban Traffic Brain processes 2.4PB of data every day. This data comes from 40,000 sensors. Workshop algorithms copy real congestion management work—they balance Baidu's real-time data with public transit schedules. All this follows Shanghai's 2025 Mobility-as-a-Service framework. Circuit logic copies the ethical triage used in autonomous systems. Here, latency thresholds give priority to emergency corridors, and at the same time, they reduce neighborhood disruption as much as possible. The generative AI module shows how to predict infrastructure maintenance needs. It detects fatigue 17% faster than traditional methods, as reported in IEEE Transactions 2023. These labs turn China's New Generation AI Development Principles into practical teaching tools. They do this by using a step-by-step approach to increase complexity.

Thought Challenge:

Should municipal AI systems retain deliberately opaque decision layers to prevent adversarial manipulation, and what transparency costs are ethically justifiable?

Go to Shanghai Tower and take the lift to the 118th floor—this is the world’s highest observation deck, called Shanghai Tower Sightseeing Hall, for amazing wide views of the city. Try the exciting glass-bottomed sky bridge. Find out about the building’s new engineering design, and see how its big pendulum damper keeps the whole structure steady. At the tower’s podium level, you can have nice meals and go shopping.

Shanghai Tower's pendulum damper

Visit the East China UAV(Drone) Industry Hub. Positioned as an integrated industrial platform, this center combines core functions including R&D testing, commercial application development, airworthiness certification processes, and industrial cluster cultivation. As China's first multi-scenario UAV testing and application platform, the East China UAV Industry Hub supports diverse operational environments. Here, you can experience the latest Chinese drone flight technology, observe facility demonstrations and flight operations, witness drone formation flight displays, and even choose to test-fly helicopters or eVTOL aircraft models. You can also personally assemble a 3D model of the C919 aircraft. A commemorative certificate will be issued upon completion of the activity. After exploring the drones, take a stroll along Shanghai's Bund. As a promenade along the Huangpu River, the Bund offers the best vantage point for viewing Pudong's skyscrapers and Puxi's historic architecture, making it an essential destination in Shanghai.

Operating a drone

The state of the drone when it hovers

Your Journey’s Rewards:

Go up to the rooftop to enjoy Shanghai’s amazing views, learn how the city’s damper system works, watch a drone formation flight show, try flying a drone yourself, and put together a 3D drone model, then walk along the beautiful Bund.

Educational Focus:

How does Shanghai Tower's mass damper physics transfer to vibration control in UAV swarm coordination?

Takeaway:

The harmonic cancellation rules of tuned mass dampers work directly for UAV swarm stabilization algorithms. Towers use tungsten pendulums to fight wind shear, while drone clusters use phase cancellation through thrust vector distribution—both cut resonant frequencies by counter-oscillation. The C919 assembly shows aviation’s move to drone-like modular building, which slashes assembly time by 300%. The Bund’s colonial granite walls give radio wave reflection baselines; these let drones position precisely indoors. As noted in CAAC’s 2024 Urban Air Mobility Guidelines, this creates a unique dataset for Shanghai’s aerial navigation systems.

Thought Challenge:

When drone swarms operate in heritage zones like The Bund, what cultural resonance metrics should supersede operational efficiency thresholds?

Ending this Shanghai science and technology study tour, embarking on the journey back home with innovative technological knowledge.