A Conversation with Aaron Qin: From the MaRS Lab to "Liuxing," Building the Most Authentic Virtual World

This episode's guest is Aaron Qin, co-founder and CEO of Manifold Tech.

In 2017, while an undergraduate at Virginia Tech, Qin led a team to the RoboMaster finals in his first competition — one of only two North American teams to advance that far. During his PhD, he worked with advisor Fu Zhang to establish MaRS Lab, the University of Hong Kong's first drone laboratory. Its most prominent open-source project, FAST-LIO, has had profound international impact in 3D mapping and surveying, with 2.4k GitHub stars. In 2022, Qin and FAST-LIO's first author Eric Xu founded Manifold Tech, which turned profitable just three months after launching its product.

In this episode, we discuss the pivotal moments before Qin co-founded Manifold Tech, the company's technical approach and disruptive innovations in 3D reconstruction, the differences between 3D perception data capture and vision-only methods, how Manifold Tech identified its core use cases, and what the future of 3D perception technology looks like amid the XR and embodied intelligence waves. If you're interested in robotic 3D perception, image reconstruction, and the evolution of VR and AR, subscribe and tune in~

[Guest]

Aaron Qin, Co-founder and CEO of Manifold Tech

[Timeline]

Before entrepreneurship: Going deeper into robotics research

01:39 His path into robotics research and student years

05:13 Becoming the "first generation" of HKU's MaRS Lab

Core is 3D perception and decision-making: Manifold Tech's ambitions extend beyond surveying

10:20 Manifold Tech's focus on R&D and application of robotic spatial perception and decision-making technology

12:13 Testing art, gaming, special inspection, and other scenarios — ultimately finding the most direct feedback in construction

21:04 Founders tinkering with tech at home every day is actually a sign of neglecting their real duties

23:18 Manifold Tech's current product line and the technical principles behind it

26:18 Once technical bottlenecks are solved, the future definitely belongs to the 3D world

30:18 Technical advantages are never permanent moats; understanding customers matters more

36:06 Profitable within six months of founding — Manifold Tech as a strong case of industry-academia-research integration

37:23 Manifold Tech's current commercialization plans and directions for expanding application scenarios

Technical bottlenecks and the visible future: Imagining 3D perception for embodied intelligence

40:57 Perception and decision-making technology is actually the core prerequisite for embodied intelligence

43:51 A 3D DSLR will definitely emerge at some point, but its arrival has prerequisites

46:13 From a consumer perspective, the ultimate large-scale scenario for Manifold's devices may be integration with gaming and 3D social experiences

On entrepreneurship: Continuous exploration and experimentation

47:21 My philosophy: seize the limited time in life to explore the vision I believe in

49:09 Advice and book recommendations for students and professionals with a robotics background

[Related Materials]

FAST-LIO project: An open-source project developed by HKU's MaRS Lab, focused on rapid LiDAR- and vision-based 3D mapping. Recognized and adopted by the industry for its efficiency, robustness, and adaptability across environments. GitHub: github.com

[Staff]

Executive producers: Jiafen, Stone

Post-production: Keyone Studio

[About ZhenFund]

"This Is For Real" (《此话当真》) is a general business podcast produced by ZhenFund, where the investment team shares the latest trends and industry insights with leaders across fields.

Founded in 2011, ZhenFund is one of China's earliest angel investment institutions. Since its inception, ZhenFund has actively sought out the most outstanding entrepreneurial teams and era-defining investment opportunities in artificial intelligence, chips and semiconductors, robotics and hardware, healthcare, enterprise services, new energy, cross-border expansion, consumer lifestyle, and other sectors.

ZhenFund — your first stop for entrepreneurship!

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