Author | Cheng Qian
Edit | Yun Peng
Zhidong reported on May 20 that today, Pudu Robot held a new product launch conference in 2024 and released new products from distribution to cleaning, including the first robot PUDU T300 for industrial distribution, the new intelligent vertical floor scrubber SH1, and a number of newly upgraded service robot products such as Happy Delivery 2, Bella Pro and Hulu Pro.
Specifically, the conference mainly includes three highlights:
Product: PUDU T300 is Pudu's first delivery robot for the industrial field, deeply engaged in service, cleaning, and entering the industry, Pudu has achieved a full-stack layout covering commercial services, professional cleaning, and industry.
Technology: Released a new PUDU OS intelligent ecological platform, and will continue to invest in the application of AI, using large models to optimize the algorithm and interaction of service robots. At the same time, the concept of humanoid is forward-looking in the service robot industry, and the three forms of special robots, humanoid robots and humanoid robots will share the future industry ecology of service robots.
Ecology: In view of the industry barriers that are not open, collaborative, and general, Pudu proposes a feasible solution of product matrix + technology ecology to build a full-stack intelligent service robot ecosystem based on the PUDU OS open platform.
From the perspective of the industry, the greatest significance of the product matrix + technology ecology is that it provides a new solution for the large-scale application of service robots under the integration of scenarios, and the essence of general-purpose ecological construction is to empower thousands of industries, and Pudu has pushed the construction of ecology to a more profound technical dimension and a wider range of application scenarios, and has established a benchmark demonstration for the service robot industry.
1. From commercial to industrial: all categories, all matrix
At present, the market size of service robots is growing steadily, from distribution to cleaning, from commercial to industrial, product functions and application scenarios are more diversified.
In this context, Pudu Robotics stands out and becomes the only service robot company with a complete product matrix covering commercial services, professional cleaning and industrial distribution, basically covering the core areas of service robots. At present, the global shipment of its products has reached nearly 80,000 units, and it is one of the service robot companies with the highest shipments in the world.
Back in 2017, Purdue launched the first robot Happy Delivery, which was also the first multi-layer rack robot in the industry at that time. A year later, the order of more than 1,000 units cooperated with Haidilao brought its capabilities in all aspects to a new level and gained a firm foothold in the food delivery robot industry.
▲The upgraded delivery robot is happy to send 2
Later, Purdue further iterated on the product form and launched a more anthropomorphic and vivid food delivery robot Bella, which also brought Purdue to the global market.
In 2021, Purdue completed the leap from distribution to cleaning. After years of deep cultivation in the field of commercial service robots, Pudu has a deep insight into user needs and pain points, and has deep practical experience in technology accumulation, sales capabilities, scale advantages, etc. In order to meet more customers and markets, Pudu's first commercial cleaning robot CC1 came into being. CC1 subverts the previous single-function product logic in terms of functionality, allowing a robot to complete the whole process of sweeping, vacuuming, scrubbing and mopping, and compared with the existing commercial cleaning robot products on the market, CC1 shows strong competitiveness.
▲Pudu's first intelligent vertical floor scrubber SH1
Today, Pudu's product matrix has reached a new level, from commercial services to industrial services, and the launch of PUDU T300 marks Pudu Robotics' move towards a broader industry application scenario.
From the perspective of the application scenarios of service robots, their technologies are similar in key algorithms such as autonomous positioning and navigation, and the accuracy requirements are different in different scenarios. Among the many scenarios, catering is the most complex and dynamic in various industries, and Purdue has accumulated massive operating data and deep technology in the catering field, and has extended it to industrial distribution scenarios in R&D.
Therefore, although PUDU T300 is Pudu's first product for industrial distribution, it also represents the top product power among industrial distribution robots, which can easily realize distribution and stable operation in highly dynamic and complex industrial scenarios.
▲普渡首款工业配送机器人PUDU T300
In the construction of the product matrix, Pudu has embarked on a unique path of its own, and compared with the simple expansion of categories, there is obviously a more in-depth planning and thinking behind the layout of Pudu's full product line.
"Customer-centric" is the consistent value of Purdue Robotics. The core of Purdue's products is to truly create value for customers and solve the pain points in the industry. At present, enterprises often need multiple types of service robots in real business, but at present, the products of different categories and different manufacturers are not interoperable, which will increase the management cost of enterprises. Solving this fragmented and fragmented customer experience is what Purdue does, and this is where the strength of Purdue's product portfolio lies.
On the basis of providing customers with a unified experience, another important concept of Pudu's industrial line products is to "do a good job in auxiliary processes", that is, other operating processes outside the main production process of the factory, unlike many AGV/AMR companies, Pudu aims more at some low-frequency, lightweight distribution links, and these auxiliary processes often lack excellent automation solutions in the past, even if they are top industrial giants, their auxiliary processes are often more manual.
The advantage of this strategy is that its products not only meet the needs of customers, but also can be coordinated with various automation products in the production process. Purdue's products can be highly "standardized", making it easier to collaborate with other stakeholders in the ecosystem and become an important part of the overall solution.
It can be seen that Purdue's product layout has always focused on the core needs of customers, making it easier for users to use more categories of robots, and from the technical perspective, the category expansion has been achieved while the technology is reused.
2. AI and Diversified Forms: Empowering Thousands of Industries with Open Collaboration
In the technology industry, ideas alone are not enough, and the competition of hard-core technical strength is still the top priority to truly make these ideas a reality. Over the past 8 years, Pudu has been firmly investing in technology research and development, and has formed leading technological advantages in positioning, perception, planning, scheduling, and control in the industry.
The positioning algorithm of the fusion of front-facing laser SLAM and overhead VSLAM adopted by Pudu robot can accurately navigate and operate stably in large-area and highly dynamic scenes. At the same time, Purdue continues to iterate in highly dynamic scenarios, and its self-developed multi-machine scheduling algorithm and motion control algorithm have also been in the leading position in the industry.
▲Upgraded marketing and distribution robot hoist Pro
Nowadays, Purdue has more thinking and layout for the future development of technology.
The conference also emphasized the continuous development and application of AI, especially the use of large models to optimize the algorithms and interactions of service robots. AI may be one of the key layouts of Purdue in the future.
In the view of Pudu Robot, with the application of AI large models in the future, AI+ robots will be the development direction of service robots in the future, which will be manifested in three aspects:
1. The improvement and optimization of interaction, the large model will greatly improve the accuracy of the robot's understanding of natural semantics, and the robot will become more "understanding";
2. With the improvement of positioning, navigation and perception, the large model will significantly optimize the end-to-end algorithm and make the algorithm better;
3. The progress of humanoid robot development will also be accelerated.
It should be noted that although humanoid robots integrate many cutting-edge technologies, they are not the only form of application. At the press conference, Pudu Robotics put forward the concept of humanoids, and the three forms of specialized robots, humanoid robots and humanoid robots will jointly constitute the future industry ecology of service robots. Different forms of robots have their own application scenarios that they are good at dealing with, and the integration of AI technology and multiple forms can better meet the real and diverse needs of customers.
▲Pudu's new marketing and delivery robot Bella Pro
It is worth mentioning that the construction of an open and collaborative ecosystem is also an important foothold for Purdue's technological innovation. At present, enterprises are facing many difficulties in the application of service robots, and in this context, an open robot ecosystem is crucial.
In January this year, Purdue proposed the concept of R2X technical framework for the first time in the industry, proposing a feasible solution to the long-term industry barriers of non-openness, non-collaboration and non-universal in the robotics industry.
At this press conference, Pudu released an intelligent ecological platform for service robots based on PUDU OS. Based on the general-purpose platform, all kinds of robots can be used across industries, thereby empowering more industries.
A real case is that in the large-scale production workshop of a domestic photovoltaic giant, the degree of automated production exceeds 90%, and the 24-hour uninterrupted operation of AGV puts forward extremely high requirements for obstacle avoidance and path planning of cleaning robots. The PUDU OS-based intelligent scheduling of Pudu's cleaning robot CC1 enables CC1 to share the map of the photovoltaic workshop with the AGV equipment, and open up a unified cloud scheduling system to obtain each other's location, speed, movement direction and route in real time, and successfully achieve collaborative operation while ensuring the smooth operation of AGV equipment.
▲Schematic diagram of R2X
By continuously building a complete product matrix, continuously cultivating in the field of technological innovation, and promoting the formulation of industry standards, Pudu is pushing the construction of the ecosystem to a deeper dimension and a wider range of scenarios. On top of the diversified layout of technology, products, and ecology, Purdue's vision is to empower thousands of industries through open and collaborative ecological construction, and build a bridge for the combination of robots and the pain points of core application scenarios.
3. General-purpose ecological construction: a new growth curve of the service robot industry
According to data from Fortune, a global authoritative organization, the global service robot market will exceed $19.1 billion in 2023, and this figure will grow to $22.6 billion this year.
Although the entire service robot industry has begun to take shape and maintain continuous growth, the overall development stage is still in the early stage, the overall penetration rate of commercial service robots still needs to be improved, and there is still a lot of room for growth.
And it should be noted that when the market reaches a certain size, its problems will become more and more obvious. At present, the increasingly fierce competition in the service robot industry, the high integration of application scenarios, and the high technical difficulty of cross-industry deployment scenarios will become the key pain points for the growth of the service robot industry and the expansion of industrial scale.
The Purdue Robot is transforming its own products, technologies and other advantages into new solutions to these challenges - the ecosystem created by Purdue has found a new growth curve for the development of the industry to a certain extent.
In order to achieve higher-quality growth, the industry must move from product fragmentation to scenario-based unification in order to truly find value in its products.
An open ecosystem is essential for the development of the industry. For example, in the hotel scenario, service robot players need to open up the inherent facilities of the hotel such as elevators in order to allow them to complete tasks such as distribution and cleaning, but due to the lack of common solutions between different manufacturers, it is difficult for robot companies to fit perfectly with the facilities of each hotel, and the cost of elevator control has remained high for a long time, which has caused trouble for robot companies, integrators and end customers.
▲基于PUDU OS的全栈智能生态示意图
In recent years, the construction of Pudu's complete product matrix has just "made a sample" for the entire industry, and the products of different categories are connected and coordinated with each other, and the versatility of applications across catering, retail, hotel, medical, industrial and other industries has brought great value to customers' unified scheduling robots, and Pudu's considerable scale of shipments has also made its products cover enough scenarios, and its solutions are convincing and universal enough.
This is very important to promote the establishment of standards and ecological collaboration of the entire service robot industry. Purdue has already taken the lead.
The robot has not been connected to all kinds of installed equipment in the scene, which has long been a major pain point in the industry, and it requires the joint efforts of many parties to solve it. Challenges also mean opportunities and new growth points. The service robot ecosystem built based on its own products and technical strength is not only the key for Purdue to lead the development of the industry, but also finds a new growth curve for the development of the industry to a certain extent.
For the service robot industry, it is already the general trend to move from mutual separation of products to scenario-based unification, and the current service robot industry urgently needs an open and collaborative ecosystem, and Pudu's approach undoubtedly gives the optimal solution at present.
Conclusion: The new growth curve of service robots, Purdue is the first to find
Founded 8 years ago, Pudu Robotics is empowering the industry with its own technical advantages and promoting the establishment of a more open and collaborative robot ecosystem.
For the development of the service robot industry, "win-win cooperation" is undoubtedly the only way to make the whole cake bigger, especially at the moment when AI technology is developing rapidly and deeply integrating with the robot industry, the form, type and technology of products are changing rapidly, and it is an inevitable choice to change the previously fragmented and fragmented ecology.
For all players in the server robot track, the improvement of an open and collaborative ecosystem is the key to accelerating the implementation of service robots in thousands of industries, and then helping various subdivided scenarios to achieve intelligent transformation and upgrading, which is also a new opportunity and customer value for the industry.
The open and collaborative ecosystem needs to be led by industry leaders such as Pudu Robotics, and the business value created by it will eventually become a new growth curve for the enterprise itself.