In order to accelerate the commercialization of service robots, Silan Technology entered the mobile chassis market a few years ago, and was the first company in China to have a mobile chassis. For robots, the chassis is like legs to humans. The robot needs to use the chassis to realize navigation, obstacle avoidance and other mobile functions. The development between the chassis and the robot is also inseparable, which can be described as "you in you" and "you in me".
The blue ocean market for hundreds of millions of mobile chassis
The continuous surge of commercial service robots has driven the continuous explosion of demand for mobile chassis. The development of the chassis market depends largely on the development of the service robot market. Based on this, the development of service robots has a great impact on the chassis. According to statistics from the Chinese Institute of Electronics, my country's service robot market has grown year by year from 2014 to 2018. In 2018, my country's service robot market reached US$1.65 billion, a year-on-year increase of 30.1%. In 2019, my country's service robot market was about US$2.2 billion.
In the context of the increasing maturity of the large-scale development of industrial robots in my country and the rapid heating up of the commercialization of service robots, the market for robot chassis has been very hot in recent years. Affected by the epidemic this year, the surge in the application of robots in medical, household, public services and other fields has brought an outbreak of the robot chassis market.
Whether it is to meet the needs of epidemic prevention and control, or is affected by the igniting "home economy", a large number of medical, food delivery, disinfection and other robots are used, and more and more new service robots are also being developed and introduced to the market. The robot chassis has brought more demand and greater market space.
Nearly 20 companies grab the cake
After sorting out the robot chassis players, we found that there are currently close to 20 domestic companies that have carried out market-oriented robot chassis operations, most of which are based on wheeled robot chassis . For service robots, wheeled robot chassis is currently the most suitable Of options. The crawler chassis is mainly used in special robots.
In addition, among the robot chassis manufacturers, not only companies such as Silan Technology that specialize in robot chassis, but also robot body companies such as Yunji and Titanium are involved. And in the research and development of the chassis, it mainly focuses on service general solutions.
Turn potential into practical development problems that need to be solved urgently
Although the robot chassis market has a lot of room for development and potential in the future, there are still two major problems that need to be solved urgently in order to transform the potential into actual development.
The first is the cost issue. The price of robot chassis on the market is currently between 20,000 and 100,000 yuan. For robots with higher configuration requirements, the price of the chassis is also higher. The high cost has discouraged many companies and consumers. If the robot chassis wants to further realize the commercialization and break the price limit, the low-cost trend is inevitable.
The technical problem is second. At present, general-purpose service robot chassis are widely used in the industry. However, according to the maturity of market segments, the demand for chassis will be different for different application scenarios. Therefore, the future robot chassis may develop in the direction of specialization, customization and high performance.
Of course, in response to these two major problems, Silan Technology has made breakthroughs. First of all, in terms of cost, Silan Technology’s Athena robot chassis has achieved low-cost operation this year. Under the premise, the price has been controlled at 6000 yuan. Secondly, in terms of performance, as a new generation product of Silan Technology, Athena has not only achieved a breakthrough in price, but in product configuration, in addition to laser SLAM, Athena is also equipped with a new visual navigation (VSLAM). The flexible combination of dual navigation makes The operation of the robot is more stable. At the same time, it can also realize the map construction of 500*500m super large scene, even in all kinds of complex commercial environments, it can successfully complete autonomous mapping, positioning and navigation.
In addition, Athena uses multi-sensor fusion technology, not only equipped with 25/40m high-performance lidar, but also fused with ultrasonic, depth camera, anti-collision, anti-fall and other sensors, which can help the robot avoid obstacles more flexibly.
The launch of Silan Technology Athena broke the awkward situation in the market that "easy-to-use chassis is too expensive, and cheap chassis is not easy to use". Let service robot companies no longer be constrained by high chassis prices, and greatly reduce the R&D cost of the whole machine.