With the iteration of technology and the explosion of demand, the service robot industry has experienced a period of rapid development. The huge expansion of the market size has attracted the continuous accumulation of capital, and the number of enterprises has grown exponentially. However, while new enterprises have brought vitality, the competition among enterprises The situation is also intensifying suddenly. In this context, what should be the business success factors of enterprises?
On August 21, the 2022 World Robot Conference ended successfully. The "China Robot Industry Development Report (2022)" released at the closing ceremony of the conference shows that China's robot market continues to flourish. It is estimated that in 2022, the size of China's robot market will reach 17.4 billion US dollars, with a five-year average annual growth rate of 22%. Among them, service robots are expected to reach 6.5 billion US dollars. This means that the market space is still broad.
In the "Commercialization Chapter" of the "Report", it is pointed out that the development of robot intelligence has gone through three stages, showing a trend of functional complexity and integration. In the first stage, the task of the robot is to replace the human hand, and the industrial robotic arm is the representative of this stage. In the second stage, the robot has more functions and can replace human hands, eyes, and brain. The composite robot in the third stage realizes multi-sensor fusion and can replace human labor to a greater extent.
The current development of the robot industry is developing from the second stage to the third stage. From a commercial point of view, under the current competitive situation and market demand in the industry, robotics companies cannot achieve commercial success without three key elements: easy-to-use products, cheap prices, and a large market space.
• The product is easy to use:
Robots can quickly and effectively replace part of labor and greatly improve work efficiency. This requires robots to have the characteristics of fast deployment, simple operation, high stability, and high environmental friendliness.
• Inexpensive:
According to market feedback, the price of most service robots is basically between tens of thousands to hundreds of thousands, and the actual replacement value of human labor is not obvious, while robots with lower prices often have mediocre performance. If the price is lower than that of products of the same category, the company is required to have better cost control capabilities than similar companies.
• Large market space
According to the data in the "Report", in 2021, the scale of China's service robots will reach US$4.9 billion, and it is expected to reach US$6.5 billion in 2022. By 2024, with the further expansion of emerging scenarios, the scale of China's service robot market is expected to break through $10 billion. This means that in the context of the aging population, subdivisions such as education and public services have great potential for application.
From the perspective of a bystander, these three points do not seem to be very difficult. In the inherent impression, these are not the "basic skills" of enterprises?
This is obviously not the case. Business success is never "1+1=2", especially in the cutting-edge robotics industry. As a technology-driven industry, the team building from 0 to 1 requires huge expenditure and continuous investment. In such a high-investment industry, no company can guarantee that it will be the first to run out of the market. Once there are problems in the operation process, most of the initial investment will be in vain.
In addition, behind each product upgrade and price drop, companies need to continue to invest a lot of money and time. However, the threshold limit of technology research and development and the rapid changes in market demand will cause a significant delay in the product development cycle. Falling behind, causing companies to miss the best time to land on the beach.
An effective way to improve product experience and lower prices.
When there is demand, there is market. The anxiety of robot companies has long been "seen" by AI technology suppliers. As batches of gold diggers enter the industry and low-threshold, low-cost technical solutions gradually enter the market, the shackles of the robot industry are being eased.
As the first batch of key AI technology suppliers for robots in China, INDEMIND is one of the representatives.
Based on the most upstream of the industrial chain, INDEMIND has rich accumulation in key technologies and product development such as robot navigation, obstacle avoidance, decision-making, AI interaction, etc., and has a full-stack technical capability for robot companies to build products from 0 to 1. In 2021, in response to the application requirements of commercial scenarios, the RBN100 commercial robot AI solution will be specially launched.
As an overall solution, the RBN100 commercial robot AI solution can provide robots with various essential core functions such as navigation and positioning, image recognition, path planning, and interactive decision-making. It also has unique advantages in application performance:
• Strong applicability:
Based on INDEMIND's natural visual navigation technology, the robot can fully adapt to commercial indoor scenes, so that it does not need to pick the scene, and does not need to be debugged. No matter shopping malls, hotels, restaurants or hospitals, it can effectively replace human labor.
• Ultra-low cost:
The RBN100 commercial robot AI solution itself can be lowered to less than 2,000 yuan, and the cost of the complete chassis including navigation and battery can be lowered to less than 5,000 yuan. Combined with relatively mature operating unit technology, the whole machine can be controlled within 2 months from project approval to mass production at the fastest, and the R&D time can be shortened by 6-9 months on average, saving 80% of R&D costs close to tens of millions.
• High degree of intelligence:
Based on INDEMIND stereo vision technology, combined with decision-making engine technology, the robot can not only realize active and intelligent obstacle avoidance, update maps, etc., but also perform human-computer interaction and realize various natural interactive task logics such as calling and following.
• High deployment efficiency:
The robot products equipped with the RBN100 commercial robot AI solution can be used directly out of the box without pre-deployment steps, and the working logic can be customized according to the needs of users. The operation is simple and does not require any technical knowledge, and ordinary users can operate it.
It should be mentioned that the RBN100 commercial robot AI solution is based on the INDEMIND standardized framework, using a combination of a standardized system (INDEMIND OS) + a standardized module suite (including sensors, computing units, control hardware, chassis drivers, etc.), with mature hardware The reference design has less restrictions on factors such as environment, function, individual requirements, and appearance selection in application, and greatly improves scene applicability and deployment efficiency. It can be widely used in various commercial scenarios and serve all types of robots.
At present, INDEMIND has reached an order of over 20,000 units in the field of commercial robots, with a single customer and a single order exceeding 70 million, which has been widely verified by customers. In the future, with the increase in mass production scale and the application of new technologies, the cost will continue to drop, and the degree of intelligence of the solution and product experience will also continue to improve.