The rivers full of garbage, the streams full of duckweed,
Strangely colored pool of stagnant water, stinking water environment,
Just by imagining, I want to avoid it.
But in most cities and even townships, this kind of water surface is very common, and we have all passed through such a "stinky ditch".
Lakes, reservoirs, inland rivers, oceans...
How will we deal with these water resources that we rely on for our livelihood when the day when we can no longer carry garbage?
When the water quality is not purified and further affects the surrounding biological environment, the water surface becomes dangerous,
We can still avoid it, how can the sanitation workers who have to face all this protect themselves?
China has 200 billion square meters of inland water, more than 100,000 reservoirs, 1 million kilometers of inland rivers, of which 80% of the waters are in urgent need of clean treatment; globally, the marine litter in the Pacific Ocean has reached more than 3 million square kilometers, even more than India's land area, if measures are not taken, the oceans will not be able to load, and human beings will not be able to survive.
Source: Oka
Traditional manual maintenance takes a long time and is highly dangerous, and it has gradually failed to meet the requirements of high efficiency, high demand and low cost.
When driverless technology meets artificial intelligence, high efficiency and low cost are combined, and an innovative team combination is providing intelligent solutions for water surface environmental protection.
In the living room of the social enterprise meeting, we invited Ms. Zhang Wenbin, the marketing director of Oka Zhifang.
Marketing Director of Orca Smartport
Zhang Wenbin
Ultimately, we hope to give sanitation workers the most dignified and safe way of working, and give business managers a plan to reduce safety responsibilities, so as to improve efficiency and reduce costs.
About Oka
Focus on the creation and application of surface unmanned driving technology and surface service robots.
Oka Zhifang focuses on the research and development of surface unmanned technology and surface environmental protection service robot (unmanned ship), environmental protection unmanned ship for urban inland rivers, reservoirs, landscape lakes, offshore ports and other waters, with garbage identification, water cleaning, water quality monitoring, security patrol, aquatic harvesting and other multi-functional functions, to promote the intelligent operation and maintenance of waters. Unmanned cruise ships are mainly used in scenic lake sightseeing, water connection, water logistics and other scenarios to promote the enrichment of water traffic. Today, the two series of four major products have matured and landed in nearly 10 countries, 50 cities, more than 100 waters, and the cumulative sailing mileage has reached 400,000 kilometers.
In the face of the growing demand for water surface cleaning and environmental protection, Oka Zhigang continues to explore in technological innovation and social value, allowing unmanned driving from land to water surface, and opening up a new direction for water maintenance.
1
Paying attention to clean water surface and environmental protection is the trend of the times
Founded in 2017, Oka Zhibao is a state-level high-tech enterprise jointly invested by Turing Venture Capital, Professor Li Zexiang, the godfather of robots, the Hong Kong X Science and Technology Fund, Xi'an Institute of Interdisciplinary Information Technology, etc., which is a state-level high-tech enterprise jointly invested by Turing Venture Capital, Academician Yao Qizhi of the Institute of Interdisciplinary Information Technology of Tsinghua University, and the core team includes master's and doctoral alumni from well-known universities such as Tsinghua, China University of Science and Technology, and Xi'an University of Technology, as well as professional industry talents from Huawei, DJI, gree and other professionals.
Source: Oka
Shechuang number
At present, unmanned ships on the market have developed such as water quality monitoring and inland water mapping. As the leader of unmanned cleaning ships, Oka Zhigang not only provides a new development direction for the unmanned ship field, but also solves the problem of water surface environmental protection in society. How did Oka come up with the idea of combining driverless technology with robots and eco-friendly boats?
Zhang Wenbin
In the past, the exploration of unmanned ships was mainly based on military industry and detection related industries, and for people's daily lives, it is not a very high-frequency and just-needed area. After many explorations, combined with the current situation of water surface cleaning operation and maintenance on the mainland, we finally locked the unmanned boat on a clean and environmentally friendly track.
Zhu Jiannan, founder and CEO of Oka Zhigang, once mentioned that in the course of his several trips, he was deeply impressed by the garbage items floating on the surface of the ancient town's river from time to time and the numerous white garbage and plastic pollution along the coastline. Prior to founding Oka, Zhu studied hydroacoustic engineering at the School of Navigation at Northwestern Polytechnical University, and later visited Technion Israel.
During his visit, he saw the results of the transformation of industry, education and research in many colleges and universities, which gave him the idea of returning to China to find opportunities to shine in the practical application of the technology mastered in the school. And his undergraduate alumnus Cheng Yuwei, who graduated from the Department of Electronics of Tsinghua University, is itself a study of the direction of autonomous driving - the combination of navigation and unmanned driving, it has become an unmanned ship.
2
Intelligence and unmanned are imperative
Shechuang number
How to balance business returns with social value?
Zhang Wenbin
Commercial returns and social values are not in conflict. Many times many people think that a company can only choose one of the two, fish and bear paws can not have both, in fact, it is not. We are doing environmental protection-related projects, on the basis of a certain commercial return, we must have a certain social value. Our projects are not only solving problems for our customers, but also for users, that is, sanitation workers, how to work more safely.
At present, the traditional water cleaning work is still based on the way of salvage by one person and one boat in the water, and faces the three major pain points of population aging, high risk of operation, and difficulty in recruiting personnel.
Source: Oka
Sanitation workers on the water range from 50 to 70 years old, they do some heavy cleaning work, need to tremble every day to support a flat boat, in the case of wind and waves, it is easy to fall into the water.
As the population ages and sanitation workers continue to age, maintaining efficiency and maintaining safety becomes a major challenge in the face of complex water surface environments and heavy cleaning tasks.
Source: Oka
In narrow inland waterways, obstacles and vegetation in the river channels, and strong light reflections from the surface of the water exposed to the sun, all pose a safety hazard to the water cleaning work of sanitation workers. In this case, the accurate positioning and navigation of inland waterways, as well as the perception of the surrounding environment, are particularly important.
After dozens of generations of iterative upgrading of products, the unmanned ship of Oka Zhigang integrates automatic driving, comprehensive image recognition, millimeter wave radar and other technologies into one, realizes remote control by APP, and has functions such as autonomous trajectory tracking, autonomous obstacle avoidance, low-power return, etc., which is 6-10 times the efficiency of traditional manual salvage, which greatly improves the execution efficiency of surface operation and maintenance.
Source: Oka
Source: Oka
In addition to water surface cleaning, weeding and other functions, Oka Zhigang SMURF surface unmanned environmental protection ship has a self-developed cloud service platform, equipped with millimeter wave radar + visual surface unmanned algorithm, high-precision map positioning, garbage recognition and other mechatronic technologies to achieve a variety of tasks for water maintenance.
Unmanned ships in low power mode can start the automatic return program, autonomously return to the charging base to charge, garbage collection silo using extraction design, only 1 staff member can take out the garbage bin, complete the cleaning of aquatic weeds, garbage.
Source: Oka
Compared with the traditional manual form, unmanned ships can work 24 hours, the overall efficiency can be increased by 300%, and the cost can be reduced by 60%.
According to statistics, the unmanned ship of Oka Zhigang has been used in more than 100 waters, and the shipment volume in the two fields of unmanned ships and clean ships is the champion, and it is the first to obtain the L4 level of surface unmanned driving.
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Unmanned driving is not just about clean water surfaces
Source: Oka
In addition to the main track of clean water surface and environmental protection, unmanned boat technology will also be extended to water quality monitoring, water patrol, sightseeing connection, water excursion and other industries. Ouka Zhigang UBOAT unmanned cruise ship to achieve point-to-point automatic connection on the water, is committed to bringing the latest water tour mode, promote the new experience of water life, and has a fully automatic water logistics system to create a new mode of logistics and transportation. At present, the tour boat has landed in the waters of Chongqing Liangjiang New Area and Seoul Lake, and is running normally.
Source: Oka
Nowadays, the Oka Zhigang team has developed into a team of about 80 people, constantly based on innovation, attaches great importance to the accumulation of R & D technology, and always emphasizes the importance of joint development of industry, education and research. So far, it has 47 national invention patents, 39 national trademarks, 2 copyrights, 12 authorized patents, and 4 soft books. In 2020, he was selected into the United Nations Young Champions of the Earth Awards for Asia and the Pacific and was certified by the United Nations Environment Programme as the Global Marine Litter Partnership.
The development of unmanned ships is a blue ocean with unlimited potential. Under the huge market prospects, in the future, we will sharpen the real knife in scientific and technological innovation, deep cleaning track and water surface unmanned driving technology. Under the guidance of the policy, we will use scientific and technological innovation to generate new momentum for development, continue to explore in depth in the field of artificial intelligence technology, grow into a new force supporting national scientific and technological self-reliance and self-improvement, and plug in the wings for the high-quality development of Xi'an.
——Zhu Jiannan, CEO of Oka Zhifang
Oka Won the "Most Innovative Potential Award" at the 2021 Youth Innovation Acceleration Camp. As a leading enterprise in surface unmanned driving technology, together with Tsinghua University and Turing Award winner Yoshua Bengio team, released the water surface unmanned data set and the water surface garbage sample data set, making its own contribution to the water surface cleaning and environmental protection industry. As the founder, Zhu Jiannan was also selected for the Forbes Under30 elite list.
In the future, Oka Smartport will continue to dig deep into the track of climate action, continue to open up new tracks, and strive to become a leader in surface unmanned driving technology and a leader in surface service robots.