With the advent of the Internet of Everything era, the demand for data centers is becoming more and more eager.
In addition, with the continuous emergence of new technologies such as 5G, edge computing, Internet of Things, and AI, as the focus of new infrastructure, the construction of data centers has become a focus in recent years.
Ma Long, Investment Director of Wutong Tree Capital, said, "Currently, data center construction is the focus of new infrastructure, and the robot industry will enter a new round of explosion. From an investment perspective, the overall global market is still growing rapidly, and service robots will usher in a golden age of development. .”
Recently, Qianxun Technology announced the completion of the Pre-A round of financing of tens of millions of yuan. This round of financing was led by SST Venture Capital and followed by Seven Seas Capital. Wang Huaiqing, the founder of Qianxun Technology, said that this round of financing will be used for marketing channel expansion, product research and development, and team expansion.
In fact, prior to this, Qianxun Technology received tens of millions of yuan in seed round financing in 2019, and tens of millions of yuan in angel round financing led by Meihua Venture Capital in July 2021.
At present, there are many substation inspection robot companies, which are basically divided by region, but overall, the stages of development of each company are quite different. Many companies have basically completed the B round of financing and are in the C stage, but some companies are still around the A round of financing, and there is still a certain gap with the top companies.
This time, Qianxun Technology has won the favor of capital, which can also show that capital and the market are still optimistic about the future potential of data centers and inspection robots.
"Science and Technology Attackers" Focusing on Electric Power Inspection
Qianxun Technology is a technology company that develops mobile robots, AI detection algorithms and digital applications. It was established in 2018.
Mainly focusing on the needs of patrol and inspection scenarios, using software and hardware products such as inspection robots, industry application systems, and terminal operating systems to provide customers with products and solutions for production safety supervision and asset health management.
At present, the main related products of Qianxun Technology are implemented in two aspects: hardware and solutions.
The main landing scenarios of the solution are concentrated in the power system, creating three intelligent inspection platforms of IOT, AI intelligent computing and BI data exploration, as well as system products such as the inspection system cloud platform and terminal operating system to ensure the inspection of the power system and data collection to function properly. According to reports, at present, Qianxun Technology has formed a complete solution for two vertical industries, the digital twin substation system and the public security patrol system.
Wang Huaiqing, the founder of Qianxun Technology, said, "At present, we are the only company in the industry that has achieved breakthroughs in the architecture of inspection robots. This technological breakthrough of Qianxun Technology has increased the inspection efficiency of robots by 5-10 times. From the original Inspection of more than 100 points in one hour has increased to the current 500-1000 points."
In terms of hardware, Qianxun Technology has assembled three inspection robot products: the outdoor inspection robot R2R4, the indoor inspection robot R3R2, and the composite inspection robot P2R4-J. Different types of inspection robots can perform related operations for different scenarios. For example, the indoor inspection robot R3R2 is equipped with a lifting platform, which is suitable for indoor inspection scenarios such as power distribution rooms and computer rooms; the composite inspection robot P2R4-J is equipped with a mechanical arm, which is more suitable for deep detection in complex environments.
Qianxun Technology said, "At the beginning of the company's establishment, the goal set by the founder Wang Huaiqing was to "be a leading company in the robot inspection and patrol industry." Now, after more than three years of development, Wang Huaiqing said that the word "to do" should be deleted. Because he believes that in the second half of 2022, Qianxun Technology will become the leading company in this field. "
Today, Qianxun Technology's power inspection solution has been implemented in multiple substations, and the equipment detection rate is close to 100%, and it is actively expanding multiple application scenarios such as urban security.
In terms of product implementation, Qianxun Technology said that at present, inspection robots have been manufactured by OEMs, and are considering self-built bases for production. It is expected that 300-500 units will be launched in 2022. In terms of marketing, Qianxun Technology is also actively expanding agent channels to expand the scope of implementation of inspection programs.
Inspection robot, the strength of technology and scene
In fact, the emergence and development of inspection robots are closely related to the demand for intelligent transformation of power grids.
At present, smart grid construction and enhanced power supply reliability have become a national strategy. In 2009, the State Grid issued a smart grid plan, dividing 2009-2020 into three stages: planning pilots, comprehensive construction, and leading upgrades to promote the development of a strong smart grid. building.
In March 2021, my country issued the "Fourteenth Five-Year Plan", which clearly stated that "accelerate the intelligent transformation of power grid infrastructure and the construction of smart micro-grids". The market demand for intelligent inspection robots that act on the power system has gradually exploded.
In addition, there are many deficiencies in traditional substation monitoring and manual inspection work, such as low work efficiency, increasing inspection workload, scattered inspection quality, inaccurate manual inspection data, and unguaranteed timeliness. The emergence of robots.
Wang Huaiqing, the founder of Qianxun Technology, said that the most direct change brought about by the business upgrade to Qianxun Technology is that "our customer unit price has changed from three to four hundred thousand to three to five million."
From the perspective of application scenarios, unlike other functional types of robots, the demand for inspection robots generally exists in industrial and commercial scenarios, including electric power, chemical industry, petroleum, municipal, machine construction, railways, etc. The market for inspection robots is very broad . At present, the application scenarios of inspection robots have expanded from power scenarios to pipelines, bridges and tunnels, as well as smart parks, smart communities, smart patrols, smart ports and other fields.
Among them, the security inspection robot market is the largest, but based on the 3% share of intelligent security in 2020, the security inspection robot market in 2020 is only 1.35 billion yuan, and the inspection robot market is small in scale, weak in rigid demand, and landed It is more difficult.
In addition, it should be noted that due to different application scenarios, although there is not much difference in hardware products, there are still certain differences in platforms, software, and algorithms. Must hinder. It is necessary to develop software facilities for different scenarios on the algorithm and platform to achieve the adaptation of inspection robots and application scenarios.
This also creates a certain technical threshold for inspection robots. If the relevant technologies are not mature enough, errors in accuracy, data analysis, and processing will occur. Accurate navigation and positioning technology, intelligent identification technology, and expert system data processing technology are all It is the core that constitutes the inspection robot to achieve precise and precise operations.
An article on "Yiou.com" mentioned, "In a certain inspection scene, the robot automatically performs the inspection task, and it must be able to accurately capture the measured object that is only 10cm in size from 20-30m away. In such a long-distance observation In some cases, the robot must have precise positioning, if the precise navigation and positioning technology is not mature enough, the position of the inspection robot station will shake slightly, and the target will be out of sight, resulting in operational errors.”
In this regard, relevant companies need to accelerate the acquisition of related technologies such as cloud computing, AI, 5G, big data, and algorithms. Part of the financing amount of Qianxun Technology's current round will be used for product development, team expansion, and other business and technology development and expansion. .
Inspection robot: Pioneer of digital twin
Inspection robots, as the name suggests, are mainly responsible for frequent inspections of various application scenarios, replacing manual inspections with low work efficiency, heavy labor and insufficient number of people, and improving the operating efficiency of enterprises.
For example, Qianxun Technology develops ARM inspection robot products, which can be used for outdoor and indoor inspections, and can replace or partially replace inspection personnel to automatically perform various inspection tasks, realize real-time visualization and quantification of indoor equipment status, and improve operation and maintenance. Improve efficiency and resource utilization, and improve the stability of indoor equipment operation.
"Silan Technology" said: "New infrastructure" construction is equivalent to "water, electricity and coal" in the intelligent age, and it will bring new development opportunities for commercial service robots, especially inspection robots.
However, with the development of the Industrial Internet today, in addition to replacing manual inspections, inspection robots are also being given new tasks and functions-data collection, which lays the foundation for the implementation of digital twin factories and the maintenance of data centers.
"Inspection robots not only perform inspection tasks, but also collect rich data in the process. This will lay the foundation for the construction of digital twin factories." Wang Huaiqing, founder of Qianxun Technology, said. "In the future, we will continue to recommend the continuous implementation of solutions to prepare for the construction of digital twin factories in the future."
The outbreak of inspection robots has largely driven the emergence of the concept of intelligent operation and maintenance. Nowadays, more and more data center companies combine artificial intelligence with operation and maintenance, and use machine learning methods to improve operation and maintenance efficiency based on existing operation and maintenance data, thereby gradually replacing manual operation and maintenance.
At the same time, the data collected by inspection robots can complete the intelligent and digital transformation of enterprises based on the industrial Internet of Things, and provide an important data foundation for the improvement of the closed-loop control of Internet data in industrial production. The data foundation is often carried out by digital twin factories. Premises for building and modeling.
Digital twin, in simple terms, is to apply digital technology to simulate physical products, manufacturing processes and even the entire factory to create a digital version of the twin. The foundation established by the digital twin needs to have sufficient data foundation and relevant technology maturity.
As the operator of application scenarios and physical products, the inspection robot is actually a data collection carrier for this kind of simulation and model reconstruction. By inspecting the relevant data of the application scenario that the inspection robot has collected, a digital version of the relevant twin digital product is established. Applied to Industry 4.0, digital twins can integrate, dispatch, and optimize resources from a global perspective, realize scientific governance in smart cities, smart manufacturing, and smart medical care, and improve overall operating efficiency and benefits.
With the help of "new infrastructure", the inspection robot industry will usher in new growth space, and enterprises such as Qianxun Technology will also develop to a certain extent, but at the same time as the industry develops, it will also boost market competitiveness. However, in the end, it will still promote the development of "new infrastructure", industrial Internet, and data centers.
Source of this article: New Industry Insights