This article is from Chuangyebang Original, Author: Barry, Editor: Zi Yu, Source: Interviewee.
In science fiction movies such as "Iron Man", "The Wandering Earth" and "Alita", all of them show the infinite imagination of human beings for their own abilities. The exoskeleton robots that appear in these works also represent the ultimate form of human-machine combination.
Nowadays, exoskeleton robots no longer exist only in science fiction, but have been widely used in rehabilitation and pension, industry, logistics, military and other fields.
Taking the rehabilitation exoskeleton robot as an example, it is mainly used in patients with brain lesions, spinal cord injury and other patients with lower limb dysfunction caused by central neuropathy.
According to The Lancet, 460 million people in China need rehabilitation. In the face of huge pension and demand, the traditional artificial care model is overwhelmed, and exoskeleton robots replace labor in the field of pension rehabilitation, and have great potential to improve the efficiency and quality of health care.
Dr. Wang Tian, founder and CEO of Cheng Tian Technology, told Chuangbang that even though medical care has been so developed, there are still very limited things that can be done in the face of patients with mobility disabilities and weak abilities. Through the rehabilitation of exoskeleton robots to make patients live more quality and dignity, this is also his original intention to start a business.
A few days ago, the exoskeleton robot company announced the completion of a round of financing of 100 million yuan. This round of financing is led by Dachen Caizhi, followed by Anxin Securities and Poly Capital, and the old shareholder Lanchi Venture Capital continues to invest, and Potential Capital serves as the exclusive financial adviser for this financing.
Dr. Wang Tian said that the new round of financing will be used to enhance the core operational capabilities of enterprise groups and continue to maintain the leading position in commercialization, expand the global business scope, and promote in-depth cooperation with top international research institutions and clinical institutions. At the same time, the company will also increase investment in products, talents, technologies and supply chains, enrich the C-end product matrix, and promote the consumer-grade Internet exoskeleton technology service platform based on AI technology.
Dr. Tian Wang, founder and CEO of ChengTian Technology
Behind this company is the entrepreneurial story of an engineering student who grew up in a family of medicine to pursue robots.
The "king of entrepreneurial ideas" who fell in love with robots since childhood
Since childhood, Wang Tian has envisioned a new species in the future that can help human beings live a life of stretching out their hands and eating. As he grew older, he thought robots were the new species.
In high school, Wang Tian began to participate in the national robot competition, and because of the same hobby, he met a group of like-minded friends.
"Since everyone is playing so well, can we be together for a long time?" After graduation, everyone has different skills, wouldn't it be better to start a company together and do something meaningful? "Wang Tian began to have the bud of entrepreneurship at this time.
In the process of Wang Tian's study, it can be said that accurate planning has been carried out around the robot.
When applying for the university, because I wanted to learn robots too much and did not know what major to apply for, I also found a professor from Harbin Institute of Technology to point out: if you want to learn robots, you must first study its body, that is, the mechanical and electronic system. In this way, Wang Tian was admitted to Harbin Engineering University majoring in mechanical design, manufacturing and automation.
After mastering the robot body, as a future robot, it must also have a soul - the algorithm of artificial intelligence. Wang Tian also received a double postdoctoral fellowship from Carlton University and Harbin Engineering University.
During his college years, Wang Tian's entrepreneurial ideas have not stopped. Because the dormitory will turn off the lights and blackout at night, I thought of making my own charging treasure; I also thought of using virtual reality technology to build a fitting network; I also thought of making a group purchase network in order to serve the students around me.
Entrepreneurship is a process of continuous trial and error, although these ideas and attempts may not take shape or succeed, but also cultivate Wang Tian's business thinking: in the process of entrepreneurship, not only from the technical point of view to think about the problem, but from the channel, model, payment and other aspects of the overall consideration.
For the direction of entrepreneurship, Wang Tian is also more firmly focused on the robot technology he is good at. Since 2012, Wang Tian established Harbin Chengtian Science and Technology Development Co., Ltd., and began to undertake various projects such as underwater inspection robots, patrol robots, integrated navigation systems, and intelligent access control.
Wang Tian's deepest impression was that he made an intelligent bus system for a city at that time, and in just three months, he had to complete the entire process from product definition, design, premature production to final mass production, and then took over this task that seemed impossible to others. At that time, the whole team basically lived in the laboratory every day, and due to insufficient manpower, many students were also pulled from the school to develop together. The most tragic thing is that although the delivery was finally completed on time, there were also many flaws.
He sighed, "To engineer a product is not simply to make a sample in the laboratory, in the past few years of starting a business, let us deeply appreciate the awe of the supply chain, the importance of the delivery link is no less than the early research and development." ”
However, it is also during this time that the ability of the whole team to fight hard battles and the ability to dispatch resources have been exercised. This also allowed the whole team to find the body feel of making the product.
After doing various projects for 5 years, Wang Tian gradually felt that always doing 0 to 1 is not a long-term thing, after a profound review, finally decided to come to Hangzhou All in exoskeleton robot entrepreneurship in 2017.
All in exoskeleton, consider a company
Want to do, do, do what you can do
The reason why the exoskeleton robot was finally selected was that Wang Tian considered it from the three dimensions of wanting to do, doing, and being able to do.
What you want to do is to let everyone enjoy the services of robots, and what you can do is to focus on the robotics that the team is good at, and to do means to do something that is high-frequency (wearable, closest to the human body), just needed (a necessity for patients who are incapacitated), and in line with the first nature (the pursuit of human functions is endless).
The choice of medical rehabilitation direction is actually inseparable from the family background of Wang Tian's medical family.
Wang Tian can be said to be a child who grew up in the hospital, often went to his parents' department, and saw the pain of too many bedridden patients. For relatives caring for patients, it is even more exhausting.
At that time, Wang Tian was thinking, "Medicine has been so developed, incurable diseases that could not be treated before can now rescue people, but after being saved, the patient's life has no quality to speak of, should we do something?" ”
The young Wang Tian did not choose the cool entertainment direction, but firmly took medical rehabilitation as the main direction of attack.
Wang Tian said, "We never lack fun points, but life is only once." "Game consoles have Sony and Switch, mobile phones have Apple, Huawei, but they lack the brand that everyone has aged." Exoskeleton robots, it is such a thing, rather than taking care of themselves.
Since exoskeleton robots were still a new science at that time, there was no complete set of theoretical systems and teaching materials for reference. In Wang Tian's mind, the exoskeleton robot is just a picture, and how to really design the imaginary picture is a very difficult thing.
Although he comes from a family of medicine, Wang Tian, who is proficient in robots, can be said to know nothing about medicine. In the early days of the business, Wang Tian's father even became his medical consultant.
From the early medical knowledge, the various causes of mobility incapacity and inability, to the rationality of product function design, the portrait of the user population in the hospital department, the problems encountered in the home use scenario, etc., these have become the topic of discussion between father and son every night.
Wang Tian attaches great importance to the demand feedback of the clinical side, and began to invite clinical patients to conduct field tests at a very early stage of the product, and constantly iteratively optimized the product.
For example, in the design of human factors engineering, the straps of the robot wearing exoskeletons look like the simplest components, like the school bag belt. However, in order to better fit people's wear, so that patients of different heights, weights, ages, and conditions can wear this simple set of simple components more safely and comfortably, Cheng Tian Technology has done hundreds of optimizations.
Exoskeleton robots need to contact with the human body, collect human intentions through sensors, carry out mechanical feedback, and how to accurately obtain the intentions of the human body, which is not only the difficulty of exoskeleton robot research and development, but also different from the traditional intelligent prosthesis.
There are currently two ways to obtain human intent: directly obtaining the operator intent and indirectly obtaining the operator intent. The vast majority of exoskeletons are indirectly acquired by operator intent, primarily by estimating human intent through exoskeleton hardware detection signals.
The multi-sensor information fusion independently developed by Chengtian Technology can monitor the human-computer interaction torque in real time, sense the shift of the patient's center of gravity, identify the user's walking intention, judge and make gait response, realize the flexible force interaction between the human and the exoskeleton, and help the user adapt to the training faster and more effectively, thereby accelerating the rehabilitation process.
To put it simply, Cheng Tian's exoskeleton robot Yo-Xing series does not require patient button control in the process of assisting patients to walk, and all actions are triggered by the patient's walking intention, truly realizing "human-machine integration".
Intent monitoring is also considered by Wang Tian to be a necessary function of the second-generation machine, and Cheng Tian Technology has also become the earliest exoskeleton robot company to do intent detection.
In addition to the Youxing series of exoskeleton robots, if the patient is bedridden, ChengTian Technology's Youfu robot can help severely bedridden patients such as the ICU to achieve the transfer from the bed to the standing position, so that the patient can achieve self-care and return to normal life.
Around the strength of patients' mobility, Cheng Tian Technology has configured a complete product matrix especially around the needs of the home care side.
For the future of the entire exoskeleton robot, Wang Tian believes that it must be based on muscle-based materials that can be worn softly like clothes. But he clearly knows that a complex robot system will inevitably undergo long-term stage development, and will not start to develop a muscle-based material such as The Panther's Vibrating Gold Suit. Although this represents the endgame, it must conform to the law of growth on the technical side and manufacturing side.
This is also like today's mobile phones, from the previous big brother to the current smart phone, after 20 years of technological iteration, people can more easily enjoy the scientific and technological achievements.
The rehabilitation and pension market must be on the home side in the future
Five years ago, Cheng Tian Technology spent most of its time doing market education.
In 2016, when Wang Tian told hospital experts about exoskeleton robots, he often spent a lot of time first popularizing what the specifics are and what functions they have, and then they were asked what was the difference between them and intelligent prosthetics. But in fact, the exoskeleton robot solves the problem of nerve and muscle strength, and is not simply a replacement for limbs.
Now, Wang Tian was pleasantly surprised to find that almost everyone knew about the exoskeleton robot and understood its function and value. This is largely due to the fact that exoskeleton robots are in line with the principle of first nature and rigid need, and will naturally educate the market. In addition, the exoskeleton robots that appear in film and television works such as "The Wandering Earth" and "Iron Man" have also had a profound impact on the entire society.
Products that meet everyone's expectations will naturally have many companies entering the market. Before 2016, the world announced no more than 100 patents for the invention of exoskeleton robots, but since then, the number of patents has increased exponentially, and the entire track has begun to heat up.
In the international market, there are not only three listed companies in the United States EksoBionics, Japan's Cyberdyne, and Israel's Rewalk, but also in China, Fourier, Daai, Maibu and other companies are also laying out rehabilitation exoskeleton robots.
Data show that during the "14th Five-Year Plan" period, China will enter a moderate aging stage, the population over 65 years old will also exceed 14%, the mainland currently has 250 million elderly people, 40 million disabled semi-disabled elderly people. There is undoubtedly a huge market potential in this.
According to Wang Tian's judgment, the big market for rehabilitation and pension in the future must be on the home side. At the same time, on the one hand, people are inferior, everyone likes to be served, and the time cost of professional doctors to serve patients is also very high; on the other hand, young people also have more and more career choice opportunities, so it is more unrealistic to rely on manual methods.
So, in what way?
The answer is digitalization.
Wang Tian believes that the biggest advantage of robots is that they are digital in themselves, which can standardize the Knowhow in the process of physician rehabilitation and can be copied on a large scale. This is also more in line with the business logic of Chengtian Technology's home side.
From the patient's point of view, what he needs is not an exoskeleton robot product, but a service, a therapeutic effect, that is, a complete set of solutions based on robots.
According to this line of thinking, Wang Tian cut into the field of health care and led Cheng Tian Technology to explore a new model of "rehabilitation as a service (RaaS)" jointly operated with rehabilitation institutions, that is, the exoskeleton robot rehabilitation system was sunk to a secondary rehabilitation specialist hospital, and the rehabilitation services during the maintenance period were completed by the community or at home, realizing the joint operation mode of home, community and private institutions.
Wang Tian told Chuangbang that improving the product matrix of home health care and opening up the entire home market has also become the focus of this round of financing.
At present, the main income of ChengTian Technology comes from the sales and leasing cooperation of exoskeleton robot equipment. In terms of price, for the different needs of hospitals and rehabilitation institutions, the price is in the order of millions; for the C-end can provide rental services, about a few thousand yuan per month.
Chengtian Technology began to commercialize in the second half of 2021, and reached cooperation with more than 200 hospitals in only half a year, covering more than 80% of the provincial administrative regions in the country, with a cumulative total of more than 10w users. According to reports, after 20 years of development, Israel's ReWalk company has only installed about 600 sets of global installed capacity.
After years of technology accumulation, Chengtian Technology has realized 100% self-developed and self-produced core components of the whole machine, and its core components such as motors and reducers are also exported to more than 20 countries and regions around the world as independent products, and have been expanded to more than 20 industries.
Relying on the self-built factories and self-developed core components in Harbin and Hangzhou, Chengtian Technology has achieved a cost of only 1/10 of the industry on the basis of achieving technological advancement and functional complexity that is much higher than that of competitors.
Cao Wei, a partner at Lanchi Venture Capital, believes that relying on the independent closed-loop technology system, Cheng Tian Technology has achieved subversive cost structure innovation on the clinical-level product side, and promoted the innovation of the exoskeleton robot industry in the commercial landing model. Chengtian Technology's "rehabilitation as a service" model has significantly improved the service efficiency and quality of customer scenarios, making it possible for exoskeletons to enter thousands of households in the future.
Exoskeleton robots are ushering in an outbreak at the B-side
At present, the market size of high-end rehabilitation medical devices is constantly expanding, and according to research by research firm ABI Research, the global exoskeleton output value is expected to increase from $392 million in 2020 to $6.8 billion in 2030.
In Wang Tian's view, exoskeleton robots have ushered in an outbreak in B-end hospitals and pension rehabilitation institutions. Especially with the opening of the DRG (grouping by disease diagnosis) era in China, China's medical and medical insurance system is transforming into a rehabilitation service-oriented medical care.
In the past, a large number of medical insurance funds were used for the procurement of drugs and consumables, and the introduction of the "two-invoice system" and the national collection policy were also escorting how to ensure medical effects and reduce medical costs. It can be referred to that in the 90s, the United States also ushered in a big outbreak in the rehabilitation industry after the DRG system was launched.
In the past few years, through the transformation of the medical insurance side, Wang Tian has felt the changes in the market.
For example, Beijing added a new lower limb robot rehabilitation medical insurance project at the end of last year, and this project is regarded as a relatively expensive subject on the rehabilitation side. At the national level, long-term care insurance has also been piloted in 49 cities across the country to provide life medical services for the disabled elderly. Driven by national policies, commercial insurance is also trying to explore more. These provide patients with a more diversified payment method.
In addition, children's willingness and ability to pay personally to their parents and patients themselves have also improved significantly in recent years. Therefore, for the development of exoskeleton robots, substantial changes have taken place on the policy and consciousness side.
For example, on the hospital side, ChengTian Technology is also taking a self-funded approach with some private hospitals to meet the demands of patients who hope to get better treatment results.
In fact, rather than the cost of treatment for relapse in the later stages of the disease, the means of rehabilitation are a more valuable and less costly option. Improving the quality of life of patients and reducing the pain caused by the recurrence of the disease is also a more meaningful thing for the whole society.
"The misconception that it is better to die than to live, and spending all money on medical treatment is becoming a thing of the past, and people live to make life more quality and dignified." Wang Tian said that although we cannot eliminate the disease, we can make the patient's life more valuable, at least make the valuable time longer.