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The research and development, manufacturing and application of industrial robots are an important indicator of a country's innovation ability and high-end manufacturing level. With the continuous improvement of intelligent manufacturing demand, the global potential market for industrial robots has reached 100 billion US dollars, and the scale of China's industrial robot market will also reach 10 billion US dollars in 2023. However, the reality is that only a few links on the industrial production line can be fully automated, and there is still huge room for improvement in the automation upgrade of the factory.
The reason is that the traditional robot adopts a mechanical-based technical route, which is difficult to adapt to the production links with high complexity, which not only leads to high non-standard equipment costs, but also makes the robot lack economy and feasibility in some scenarios, and a large amount of work still needs to be completed manually. Graduated from Stanford University's Bionic and Dexterous Operation Laboratory, Wang Shiquan, founder and CEO of Flexiv Feixi Technology, believes that robots should not only pursue hard indicators such as position accuracy, but also develop adaptability to complex environments in production.
Founded in 2016, Feixi Technology systematically innovates robots with the path of imitation technology, focusing on the research and development and production of adaptive robots that integrate industrial-grade force control, computer vision and AI technology. This year, Dawn's robot products received a certification from a third-party certification body, Intertek, which will circulate freely in the two major overseas markets of the European Union and North America (the United States and Canada), as well as other countries and regions that recognize CE and North American certification.
A new trend in the development of industrial robots from mechanization to imitation of humanization has emerged. In the near future, robots will have the ability to "hand-eye coordination" like humans, opening a new era of industrial automation.
"Imitation of humanization" technology innovation, industrial robots upgraded
So far, industrial robots still have many restrictions in practical applications. Industrial scenarios are very different, there are many types of production materials, and robots often need to be equipped with specially designed non-standard equipment or tools in practical application scenarios. A large number of non-standard solutions also affect the flexibility and scale effect of the production line itself.
Data show that in the top 20 countries in the world's robot installation, the average of 10,000 industrial workers should only be equipped with more than 100 robots, and the use density of robots is not more than 10%, which objectively reflects the limitations of robots in production and manufacturing.
In fact, the existing industrial robots still mainly use position control to work, the perception and feedback of the surrounding environment is limited, which greatly limits the scope of tasks it can achieve, especially in the complex production process, the traditional robot solution is bound to be accompanied by a large number of non-standard equipment, and even still need to rely on a lot of labor.
At the same time, the labor cost of manufacturing industry continues to increase, and enterprises are generally facing the problem of "difficulty in recruiting workers and shortage of labor". From the perspective of consumers, the production of small batches and multiple categories of products has become a trend, which also puts forward requirements for flexible production capacity at the factory end. How to break through the predicament and make industrial robots truly meet the needs of the manufacturing industry to automation, digitalization and intelligent upgrading, Wang Shiquan, founder and CEO of Feixi Technology, believes that the manufacturing industry needs new robot products and solutions.
Different from the mainstream direction of robot mechanical development, Feixi Technology aims to promote the humanoid innovation of robot technology, that is, to "make robots work flexibly like people". Wang Shiquan believes that new AI technologies such as force sensing systems and computer vision are developing rapidly, and robots are expected to complete more complex and flexible work, whether at the algorithm or hardware level, and fundamentally have versatility.
For "humanoid" robots, position accuracy is not the focus of technical pursuit, but to be like people, with the ability to judge, make decisions and adapt to complex environments. Therefore, in the process of research and development, the team of Feixi Technology focuses on improving the force control performance of robots in different dimensions. At the same time, the team also integrated new AI technologies such as computer vision into the robot ontology to improve its ability to cope with complex environments.
Through the all-round transformation of the underlying hardware to the upper layer control algorithm of industrial robots, while deeply combining artificial intelligence, Feixi Technology launched its first generation of adaptive robot product Rizon Dawn in 2019. The robot product imitates the ability of human-sized brains and conditioned reflexes to adapt to complex working environments, providing a new solution for the automation of production lines in the manufacturing industry.
Compared with traditional industrial robots, the Rizon series has a high degree of standardization, which greatly reduces the proportion and cost of non-standard equipment. In addition, compared with humans, Rizon robots have higher force accuracy and traceable data management system, which can significantly improve the process level, production line deployment and line change efficiency of each production link. Therefore, not only to help enterprises alleviate labor problems, Rizon robots will help enterprises to upgrade intelligently in many aspects such as flexible production and digital management.
Deeply develop hierarchical intelligence to create the adaptive ability of robots
Looking at the major processes in the manufacturing industry, the robot utilization rate of handling, welding, spraying and other links is significantly higher than that of assembly, grinding and polishing, even if the recruitment problems of the latter two are more severe in reality. This is because, compared with the "point-to-point" workflow such as handling and welding, assembly, grinding and polishing are mainly continuous contact operations, and the process is more complex and more difficult to automate.
In Wang Shiquan's view, the quality requirements of assembly, polishing and polishing are difficult to ensure only by relying on the absolute position accuracy of the equipment under the condition of conventional incoming material control, and more need to be directly controlled on the strength of process actions such as buckle pressing, so the robot perception and control capabilities are higher. This is why these links still rely heavily on manual completion. Feixi Technology's "humanoid" robot aims to solve the automation of contact process links such as assembly and grinding, which means tens of millions of workstation upgrade needs.
It is understood that the Rizon adaptive robot launched by Feixi deeply integrates industrial-grade force control, machine vision and AI technology, and has the adaptive characteristics of high position error tolerance, strong anti-interference ability, and intelligent migration. As a result, Rizon adapts well to many process links that are difficult to automate, such as flexible grinding of large curved objects such as bodywork and special-shaped parts, and adaptive assembly of precision parts such as voice coils and FPC boards. Moreover, the robot itself is equipped with AI algorithms such as computer vision, which can also complete tasks such as grasping, plugging and unplugging, and improve the versatility of the robot.
More importantly, in Africa, robots only need to be equipped with a small number of non-standard equipment to form a standardized solution. In this way, Rizon robots can not only help grinding and polishing, assembly and other aspects to complete the automation upgrade, but also greatly improve the flexibility and standardization of the production line, thereby shortening the production line deployment and capacity climbing time of the factory.
On top of the robot body, Fei Xi's team developed the universal intelligent robot brain-AI system Dome. As a general artificial intelligence system, Dome Knowledge System can conduct AI algorithm research and application product development based on robot vision, force sense, touch and other multi-information perception. Wang Shiquan introduced that Fei Xi emphasizes hierarchical intelligence in AI integration. That is to say, the overall combination of the dome system and the robot ontology control system is analogous to the human brain, cerebellum and conditioned reflex layer, which deals with different problems at each level, so as to continuously perceive and recognize the more complex environment, and make corresponding decisions and judgments.
In the software part, in addition to the self-developed Flexiv Elements robot operating system, Feixi also provides RDK toolkits and common API interfaces for the development direction of composite mobile robots, supporting secondary development and laying the foundation for the diversified automation upgrade needs of more industries.
At present, the Non-Xi Rizon adaptive robot has been implemented in many fields such as automotive, 3C electronics, medical and scientific research. The company has cooperated with many senior customers in the industry, including a number of automotive brand OEMs and Tier1 suppliers, head brand mobile phone manufacturing suppliers, as well as New Hope, Amazon and other well-known enterprises at home and abroad. In addition, Feixi Technology is also connecting many strategic cooperation such as industry, academia, and capital, and strives to build a universal intelligent robot ecosystem.
In December this year, the Rizon4 adaptive robot of Feixi Technology officially obtained the EU CE certification and the North American ETL certification issued by the internationally renowned third-party certification agency Intertek. This means that Rizon4 has reached the advanced level recognized by international standards, and the products will circulate freely in the two major overseas markets of the European Union and North America (the United States and Canada), as well as other countries and regions that recognize CE and North American certification. In response to this certification, Wang Shiquan, CEO of Feixi Technology, said that CE and ETL certification are not only important regulatory milestones in product maturity and safety reliability on the road to commercialization, but also lay the foundation for the comprehensive market expansion of adaptive robots.
With the maturity of technology and the landing of products, the overall revenue of Feiyu this year has increased by more than ten times. In addition to single-station deployment for specific processes, Feixi has also developed a complete line solution for the automation needs of the whole production line, and has delivered a final assembly project for an electric vehicle component customer.
The whole line plan landed, and the automation rate increased to 100%
According to Wang Shiquan, the electric vehicle parts customer, with fast orders and many product categories, has a clear flexible demand for the production line. However, the traditional robot production line of the previous customer contains a large number of non-standard equipment and about 20% of the artificial workstations. This type of traditional production line not only takes longer to deploy, but also finds it difficult to achieve sufficient flexibility, and the compatibility of product changes is limited.
When designing the adaptive robot production line for customers, Fei Xi focused on the decoupling independence of each process link. Wang Shiquan introduced that compared with a single station, the design of the whole line scheme can implement the technical characteristics of the non-overnight in every link, and it is easier to achieve the synchronous increase of product yield and other indicators. Through the way of full-line control, the accuracy and yield requirements of different links can be coordinated to maximize the comprehensive benefits.
Compared with the original non-standard automated production line, the electric vehicle parts customer finally achieved 100% automation rate and 20% cost savings. The proportion of non-standard production lines in the production line has also been significantly reduced, the degree of flexibility has been greatly improved, and the commissioning and climbing time has been greatly shortened.
In addition, before the transformation of the production line, the customer's production data was scattered, and it was difficult to concentrate on penetration and utilization. Through the intelligence of the adaptive robot itself and the ability of the system to work together, The company can provide the customer with full traceability of process data, optimize production data records and early warning services, and create value for customers throughout the whole life cycle of the product.
The smooth delivery of the whole line project also means that Feixi Technology has opened up its software and hardware full-process services in the corresponding fields.
Wang Shiquan revealed that at present, Feixi has served dozens of customers, both single-station projects and whole line solutions. On the one hand, Feixi Technology solves the automation problems in different processes with standardized ontology and corresponding software systems, and single-station projects can be quickly copied. On the other hand, through the exploration of the whole line solution, Fei Xi hopes to understand the production details of various industries and processes, reverse the development of products and software through the deep cultivation of the scene, and continuously optimize the product platform. At the same time, the company also plans to gradually use platform-based products to empower industry partners such as integrators to jointly help the automation upgrade of the whole industry.
The entire line project of the adaptive production line has been delivered
Under the epidemic, the global manufacturing industry has been hit hard, digital transformation and intelligent manufacturing have become an effective way for enterprises to cope with various uncertainties, and industrial robots have been placed high hopes. However, the traditional industrial robots have the limitations of scenarios and processes, and how to further improve the economy of robots and improve the automation level of manufacturing has become a new topic. Feixi Technology has made systematic innovations with the path of imitation humanization technology, creatively created an adaptive robot technology route, and greatly broadened the application space of robots.
Through the exploration of humanoid robot technology, Feixi Technology hopes to "make intelligent machines robots". Wang Shiquan, founder and CEO of Feixi Technology, concluded that adaptive robots will achieve a higher level of automation and create greater economic benefits in the manufacturing field with high product complexity, fast category update iteration and dispersed production links. With the continuous improvement of the economy of industrial robots, the full automation upgrade of the manufacturing industry is just around the corner, and a smarter industrial future is opening up.
In addition to the industrial scene, Feixi Technology will continue to explore open and complex application scenarios with higher requirements, and plans to get involved in many fields such as agriculture, medical treatment, service, scientific research, etc., and continuously broaden the boundaries of technology and services.