"Science and Technology Innovation Board Daily" (Shanghai, reporter Zhang Yangyang) news, the past year, is a bumper harvest year for the service robot industry.
From the perspective of shipments and investment and financing, service robots are in a hot state. Compared with the annual shipments of 100 units in previous years, the shipments of major manufacturers have begun to double and grow rapidly in the past year, and the annual shipments of some manufacturers have reached thousands of units, with cumulative shipments exceeding 10,000; the financing of head service robot enterprises has also reached the C round, and the financing of some manufacturers has exceeded hundreds of millions of yuan, such as: Damin Robot's B+ round of financing of more than 1 billion yuan; Purdue Technology's 500 million yuan C round of financing. In December 2021, Pursuit Technology, which focuses on the scene of household cleaning robots, even formed the largest single financing publicly disclosed in the entire robot field that year with a C round of 3.6 billion yuan.
The labor gap, the rising labor cost, and the declining unit price of robots are the fundamental drivers of the development and outbreak of service robots in China. At present, service robots mainly focus on the two major areas of to C family and to B commercial, the former is mainly used for home cleaning scenes, and the latter has a good penetration rate in logistics distribution, catering, agricultural sanitation, commercial retail and other scenarios.
In the industry's view, the most difficult thing about the application of service robots is the understanding of the scene, which is also the core value of the enterprise that investors believe that there are technological breakthroughs in this area. Because of its service characteristics, if the service robot wants to become a general hardware similar to mobile phones and computers in the future, it also needs to be continuously iterated in environmental perception, motion control, human-computer interaction and other technologies. In the future, enterprises that have made breakthroughs in core technologies will also be more likely to gain the favor of capital.
Comer
Service robot refers to a non-manufacturing, service-oriented robot, subdivided, and can be divided into to C's household robot and to B's commercial service robot, the former mainly includes sweeping and other services home cleaning products, the latter mainly serve logistics, distribution, catering and other commercial scenarios.
From the perspective of the subdivision structure of the robot industry, the current industrial robot ranks first in the market, and the service robot as a rising star, the development momentum can not be ignored.
Liu Xin, vice president of Yuanjing Capital Investment, said in an interview with the "Science and Technology Innovation Board Daily" reporter that relatively speaking, industrial robots are already a mature market, and the growth is linear, but the growth rate and ceiling of service robots in the future will be very high.
On the one hand, service robots, especially to C's consumer-grade products, are more price sensitive. Technological progress and the improvement of the robot industry chain have made the cost of service robots drop significantly, and have also driven the growth of demand for service robots.
CICC Securities Research Report pointed out that in the current cost of service robots, the cost of core components such as perception and motion control accounts for 70%, and with the intensification of technological progress and competition in domestic substitution, the price of core components continues to decline. In the case of lidar, velodyne, a leading technology leader, has announced plans to reduce the average unit price of lidar from $17,900 in 2017 to $600 in 2024. The cost of service robots has dropped significantly, making the threshold for service robots lower.
On the other hand, the widening of the manpower gap, and the spread of the new crown epidemic so far has caused a surge in the demand for contactless services, and various types of service robots such as temperature measurement robots, food delivery robots, and disinfection robots have begun to be widely used in daily life, which has further boosted the attention of service robots.
At present, the service robot market is already in the stage of rapid increase in penetration rate, and there has been a good penetration rate in cleaning, logistics, catering and other scenarios, and has entered the stage of rapid promotion. In addition, in the field of labor shortage such as commercial retail, public health, electric power and energy, agriculture and sanitation, service robots are forming more and more mature programs, forming benchmark cases and reflecting value.
According to the "China Robot Industry Development Report (2021)" released by the Chinese Institute of Electronics, the global robot market is expected to reach 33.58 billion US dollars in 2021, and service robots have become an important supporting force, and the market size is expected to reach 12.52 billion US dollars, accounting for 37.2%.
To B and to C two-wheel drive
Compared with industrial robots that have been initially industrialized, service robots are becoming a blue ocean for entrepreneurship and investment.
In the interview, Liu Xin mentioned that from the perspective of demand satisfaction, the robot usage rate of a large number of commercial scenarios, such as food delivery, delivery, medical surgery rehabilitation, and even home cleaning, is still extremely low.
Low penetration rate means high incremental space, which is why Liu Xin is now more optimistic about the subdivision of service robots.
In the above subdivision scenario, according to the different application environments, the service robot is divided into to C and to B, the former because of the actual needs of the user's daily cleaning, etc., and the product tends to be standardized, no need to customize, no need to deploy and install to customers, the output and penetration rate can be rapidly improved, has been the growth leader of the service robot market at this stage, and even in the A shares have spawned Two listed companies of Coworth and Stone Technology, and are sought after to varying degrees in the capital market.
Facing the B-end market, professional service robot companies are also booming.
YOGO Robot is a robot service provider focusing on logistics and distribution, and currently focuses on indoor building scenarios such as real estate and hotels. During the Epidemic in Shanghai, YOGO Robot delivered 100 robots to assist in the delivery of meals and medicines at The Shanghai Lingang Fanggang Hospital.
Cai Xiaowei, co-founder of YOGO Robot, said in an interview with the "Science and Technology Innovation Board Daily" reporter that the reason why YOGO cut into the building scene is based on the technical accumulation of the founding team itself on the one hand, on the other hand, overcoming the high complexity of the building scene, which also means that it has the ability to do mobile tools in all indoor scenes. In addition, while serving the B-end, the building delivery robot can also reach the C-end at close range, providing a variety of value-added services and serving the internal circulation of the building economy.
Cai Xiaowei believes that in addition to the technical requirements of the commercial service robot track, what is more difficult is the understanding and depth of the scene, such as how to integrate with the restaurant environment and the background catering management system in the catering scene; building distribution, how to integrate with the overall environment of the building as a whole, such as elevators, gates and irregular flow of people.
"To B-end service robot, essentially is an engineering project + artificial intelligence landing, to YOGO service building environment, distribution robot in addition to to the L4 level of indoor unmanned driving, and elevators, gates and other IoT equipment to form AIoT, but also with the hall, stairs and other scenes to fully run in, in the room without traffic rules, to the robot to develop a code of conduct."
"The core investment value of the enterprise lies in the deep understanding of the customer scenario." Liu Xin told reporters that commercialization ability is an important factor in judging the investment target, and it is possible to deeply understand the customer's demand scenario and quickly transform this scene into a product.
Positional awareness and interaction capabilities require technological breakthroughs
Although the trend of machine substitution, product cost reduction and other multi-party efforts, so that service robots are getting closer and closer to life, but to become a general hardware like mobile phones, computers, it will take time.
In the past, limited by the level of technological development, robots worked more in a set scene with a fixed route and a fixed program. Due to the service characteristics, the ability of service robot robots such as environmental perception, motion control, and human-computer interaction puts forward higher requirements. This is also an important premise for service robots to move from passive work to active intelligence.
"At the core is positional perception and walking technology." Liu Xin believes that taking household robots as an example, the current product level as a whole is still near the passing line; followed by the interaction ability, which is also worth iteratively improving.
From an industry-wide perspective, the above technologies are making a series of progress.
In terms of positioning, due to the introduction of SLAM autonomous navigation technology, service robots have become environmentally adaptable. At present, the domestic enterprises that provide SLAM technology mainly include fast sense technology, Silan technology, etc., and foreign technology giants such as Apple and Google are also vigorously developing SLAM technology.
In terms of path planning, the hardware layer, due to the performance of core components such as servo motors, precision reducers, and controllers, realizes accurate control and high stability in the low-speed scenario of service robots. It is worth mentioning that domestic leading enterprises such as Huichuan Technology, Eston, etc. have made rapid technological progress in servo motors and reducers, and have achieved a certain market share; the gradual maturity of the software layer, path planning algorithm, and the development of superimposed SLAM have further advanced from the early stage of repeated mechanical movement under the set environment and set path, to the intelligent direction of independent planning of motion paths and interaction with the environment.
In addition, AI technologies such as image recognition and voice interaction have developed rapidly in recent years, which has enhanced the environmental adaptability and human-computer interaction of service robots.
CICC Research Report believes that the service robot industry is in the early stage of development and will flourish with technological upgrading, cost exploration, and application scenario expansion. In the industry map of service robots, it is recommended to pay attention to the three areas of machine perception, artificial intelligence and service robot ontology.
This also means that in the future, enterprises that have made breakthroughs in the underlying technology will also be more likely to gain the favor of capital. "Robot companies with stronger core capabilities, we are indeed more willing to invest, and the market is more willing to give higher valuations." Liu Xin said.