Image source@Visual China
In the era of intelligence and automation, commercial service robots are accelerating the transformation of our business ecosystem. From airports and high-speed rail stations to hotels and shopping malls, as well as museums and office halls, more and more commercial service robots can be seen. With the help of intelligent interaction, autonomous navigation and other technologies, these robots with different images can complete some basic services and improve the efficiency and experience of services.
According to the content of the "China Robot Industry Development Report (2023)", the size of China's robot market will reach 17.4 billion US dollars in 2022, with an average growth rate of 22% in 5 years, and the scale of service robots will reach 6.5 billion US dollars in 2022, and it is expected to exceed 10 billion US dollars in 2023.
However, this "sunrise industry" has also encountered a bottleneck period, and behind the growth of the market scale, there is a crisis of declining growth. The industry's investment enthusiasm is gradually fading, market competition is gradually intensifying, in order to seize the market, some brands and agents have also started a price war.
"It's easy to come into this market, but it's very difficult to continue to grow and achieve profitability," Yang Peng, president of iBen, told Titanium Media App, "Commercial service robots are still in the exploration stage, doing business and doing business are two different things, don't fantasize about opening a gap in hardware costs, integrating software and hardware services and truly making products that meet the needs of the scene, the market will pay, and the entire market will be bigger." ”
Acceleration of the application of commercial service robots
According to the definition of the International Federation of Robotics, a service robot is a semi-autonomous or fully autonomous working robot, which can complete service work that is intended for human health, but does not include equipment engaged in production, and is mainly used in non-manufacturing fields, such as cleaning, retail, logistics, medical care, education and other industries and scenarios. Among them, commercial service robots are widely used in commercial and public service fields, such as catering, hotels, retail, etc., to improve service efficiency and quality.
Around 2016, it was the second explosive period of domestic AI entrepreneurship, giving birth to many service robot companies. However, at that time, the technology and product application were still in an imperfect period, and they could not reach a good level to truly realize the value of the product. Yang Peng pointed out that after the products at that time entered the B-side, they did not solve the business problems of the B-end in the production and operation links. The understanding of the robot on the business side is still a relatively long process.
According to the function and scenario division, commercial service robots can be divided into multiple types. The first is an intelligent interactive robot, which is mainly used in the lobby of museums, banks and other exhibition halls to replace the interpreter and carry out some simple work.
The second is a tool robot, which replaces a single type of work with simplicity, high repetition and large amount of labor. For example, intelligent inventory robots use machine vision, radio frequency technology (RFID) and other technologies in large supermarkets to quickly and accurately identify and record the location and quantity of each item. Through the data analysis algorithm, the robot can process and count the read RFID tag information, generate a detailed inventory report and synchronize it to the warehouse management system to achieve refined management.
Tool robots also include delivery, cleaning and disinfection robots, etc., which have appeared more frequently in the past three years and are often seen in hotels, high-speed rail stations and other places. Relevant data show that commercial service robots in the catering industry entered a period of rapid development around 2020, and showed explosive growth in 2021, with a year-on-year increase of more than 100% in market size.
In addition, there is also a special robot, such as in the railway system, which cleans the high-speed rail. According to Yang Peng, after the high-speed rail runs normally for 3,000 kilometers per day, it needs to enter the maintenance workshop for daily maintenance, and special robots can replace the traditional manual skin cleaning work. What used to take 25 people 45 minutes of work has now been reduced to 20 minutes with just two people on one device.
With the further iteration of intelligent and digital technologies, commercial robots will accelerate their application in more scenarios. The "China Robot Industry Development Report (2020~2021)" pointed out that the market demand for China's commercial service robots is strong, and the future market potential is huge. At the same time, some local governments are also actively promoting the development of the commercial service robot industry and providing policy support and service guarantee for robot enterprises.
The growth of the industry has encountered a bottleneck, and the more sales, the greater the loss
It should be pointed out that replacing manual labor with robots is more about reducing operating costs and reducing costs and increasing efficiency. However, not every service robot product in every scenario is "value for money". For the interpretation robot of the museum, the market price is generally between 10-150,000 yuan, and the cost is diluted through the multi-year service period, which is more cost-effective than manual work. In addition, it is also easier in management and post-training, and the integrated linkage with the sound and light of the exhibition hall can also further improve the effect of explanation.
For hotel delivery robots, judging from the current development, it has not essentially brought cost reduction and efficiency increase. During the epidemic, with the help of contactless delivery, delivery robots have emerged. However, it is still necessary to manually place the items in the storage compartment and set up the delivery instructions before delivery. To a certain extent, the hotel's delivery robot has not been able to replace the original manual, but only reduced the workload.
Image source@Visual China
The staff of a luxury hotel told us that the delivery robot is more of a representative of the hotel's differentiated service, and the actual efficiency of hundreds of thousands of products is not as high as that of manual work, and in addition to the existing products, it will not be purchased in the future.
"The hotel is not a fool, before the purchase of one is fresh, the other is indeed demand, now the epidemic has passed, the market has also dropped, you can clearly feel that the product is not easy to sell", a brand agent Xiao Wu said.
The market's attitude towards delivery service robots is also a microcosm of the whole industry. Compared with the rapid growth in the previous two years, commercial service robots have encountered a bottleneck period of development, and the growth rate has fluctuated downward. Previously, IDC released data saying that the overall size of the Chinese market for commercial service robots in 2022 will be 169 million US dollars, a slight decrease of 2.5% year-on-year.
At the same time, the enthusiasm for the investment market is fading, not as influxed as it did during the pandemic. Xiao Wu pointed out that the development of the entire robot business to the beginning of last year, the growth has reached a certain bottleneck period, itself the current investment environment is not good, to let investors take money to invest in service robots is more difficult.
Titanium Media App found that the decline in the growth rate of commercial service robots is not only related to its own audience positioning and products, but also one of the reasons for the slow speed of scene expansion over the years. Five years ago, service robots were applied in shopping malls, office buildings, hotels, museums and other places. Many customers purchased fresh at the beginning, hoping to improve efficiency and reduce operating costs, but in the end they became "mascots", and the start-up rate was not high, and they became gimmick products.
Yang Peng pointed out that there are very few companies in China that can achieve annual shipments of more than 1,000 units, and there are very few companies that can have a high long-term utilization rate in the case of completing this kind of shipment.
"Now many domestic robots will face a problem, in the case of increasing revenue, its loss is increasing, the more sales, the greater the loss, which means that its sales revenue and operating costs are proportional to growth. ”
Titanium Media App learned that commercial service robots are actually an industry with very high gross profits, and Xiao Wu did not deny this for the high gross profit of the industry, but he also said that this is because the industry is still in the early stage of development, and the early R&D investment needs high gross profit to be evenly shared. As for why the more you sell, the more you lose, in the final analysis, the operating costs are too high, and the industry is seriously involuted, even if it is to go to sea, it is not moving, and brands and agents have engaged in a price war, which has disrupted the normal development order of the industry.
"In the Yangtze River Delta and the Pearl River Delta, there are brands that specialize in low prices, and to see who sells well, I will quickly copy and make a similar appearance and general function, and then sell it at a low price. ”
To tap the value of rigid demand, sustainable growth is the key
Even if it is currently affected by a variety of internal and external factors, resulting in a tightening of the growth rate of the industry, but in the view of practitioners such as Xiaowu, there is no problem with the direction of commercial service robots, and there is no problem with the prospects, but the impact of the current environment has led to investors and brand expansion will be more cautious. "The downturn is temporary, and the industry will always pick up, driven by technologies such as AI and automation. ”
Yang Peng said that now the market growth is slowing down, as an enterprise should make targeted business adjustments, even though the industry has a lot of space in the future, but now is not suitable for radical expansion, under the premise of scale development, to ensure profitability. "Doing business and doing business are two different things, doing business includes doing business, but doing business must not be doing business. ”
However, one thing to realize is that how to make the right adjustments before the industry returns to high growth is the key to whether it can be sustained. Titanium Media App believes that on the one hand, it is necessary to tap the rigid value of commercial service robots, in other words, the products made must find the right scene, find the right customers, and the market will pay if there is demand, so as to ensure the sustainability of the business and improve the repurchase rate.
The era of blind expansion has passed, and it is true that you can make excellent products with feelings, but the premise of good work presentation is to survive first. Titanium Media App learned that there was once a popular robot company that invested tens of millions of dollars to make molds, and the final product was very good, but the shipment was only about 10 units a month, which could not cover the cost at all. For enterprises that are still continuing, it is necessary to maintain the existing business, innovate the incremental business, and further ensure the profit level while developing on a large scale.
On the other hand, it is difficult to form a threshold in China's R&D environment and manufacturing environment, and in order to achieve sustainable growth, the research and development of core technologies such as software needs to be continuously strengthened. Yang Peng believes that China is very mature in the hardware supply chain, and there is no illusion that every company can form an absolute cost advantage in making hardware products in China, and no matter what kind of advantage the hardware cost is, the cost gap will not exceed 10%.
"If we want to solve the value of customers' rigid needs, we must take the customized route, integrate software and hardware platforms, invest in the whole chain, and further reduce the operation and delivery costs and after-sales costs through the cloud-pipe-end model in addition to the cost advantage of core components. ”
Since last year, the popularity of AI large models has also given service robots a direction of change. However, considering the characteristics of the market, for most commercial service robot companies, there is no need to start research and development from scratch, and it is enough to train and optimize through the existing open source models, and combine the large model capabilities with the production and operation of the enterprise itself, so as to improve the efficiency of research and development and reduce the consumption of hardware resources.
In addition, recently, humanoid robots have also ushered in a breakthrough in development, which also provides an opportunity for the service robot industry to further break the situation. However, Yang Peng believes that the real humanoid robot is a dimensionality reduction blow to the existing robot products, which cannot be achieved in the short term.
"For our industry, it is still necessary to focus on the needs of the scene, to cater to the development of the market, and to explore the new direction of the development of the industry-wide scenario application. (This article was first published on the Titanium Media App, author/Du Zhiqiang, editor/Zhong Yi, Xiaowu is a pseudonym in the article)