As commercial cleaning robots enter more and more scenarios, a single medium-sized robot cannot effectively cover all areas, and a more segmented product portfolio is becoming a new trend.
“New trends” in product form
In commercial scenarios, current commercial cleaning robots are almost all medium and large product forms. A larger size means higher cleaning efficiency, but it also limits cleaning coverage. Whether it is large shopping malls, supermarkets, etc., or relatively small restaurants, shops, convenience stores, etc., existing commercial cleaning robots are basically difficult to cover the complex and narrow aisles, tables, chairs, gates and other areas. This also causes end users to have greater concerns about robots.
Since a single "big" robot is not enough, what about adding "small" robots?
The "big" robot is responsible for larger open areas, while the "small" robot is responsible for checking for leaks and filling vacancies, cleaning those more complex and narrow areas, which can not only complete the cleaning needs, but also bring about product differentiation. In fact, manufacturers are already doing this.
In October last year, Ecovacs released two commercial cleaning robots, K1 and M1, at one time. Different from similar products on the market, K1 is a rare small and medium-sized robot (the size difference between it and similar products is more than half). According to Cobos, K1 and M1 are positioned as a combined robot solution of one large and one small to cope with small, medium and large scenes. Similarly, Haier, the traditional home appliance giant, also brought a large and small combination this year, the B5 cleaning robot and the B3 cleaning robot, announcing its strong entry into the market.
Countless times in the past, it has been proven that when a trend comes, it is always fleeting, and those who can reap the dividends are mostly the earliest manufacturers, just like the emergence of laser navigation for sweeping robots, the emergence of integrated sweeping and mopping, and the emergence of base stations. ...However, new trends mean the need for new technologies, but technology research and development is never achieved overnight. It requires continuous innovation and accumulation over a long period of time. Although small commercial robots are similar to medium and large commercial robots, they cannot be directly transplanted. Medium and large commercial robots Navigation solutions are costly and require large hardware space, and units such as computing platforms, MCUs, and chassis drivers also need to be re-adapted. Therefore, the development costs and cycles of new products will not be significantly reduced.
"Large + small" multi-machine collaboration meets the needs of complex ground operations in multiple scenarios
In fact, not only manufacturers are paying attention to this trend, but also AI technology suppliers in the upstream of the industry. In order to solve the current industry needs, INDEMIND has launched different navigation solutions for commercial robots of different sizes, "Commercial Robot AI Kit" and "Commercial Robot AI Kit Lite". Both solutions are based on INDEMIND's self-developed INDEMIND OS Fusion AGI system. The foundation adopts a multi-sensor fusion architecture with binocular stereo cameras as the core, supports different categories of mainstream sensors on the market, and can meet the development of core functions such as commercial robot navigation and positioning, intelligent obstacle avoidance, path planning, and decision-making interaction, and can be widely used. For commercial service robot platforms such as commercial cleaning, hotel distribution, food delivery, and inspections, in terms of application level, "Commercial Robot AI Kit" is suitable for 100kg-level robot platforms, and "Commercial Robot AI Kit Lite" is suitable for 10-50kg level robot platform.
In terms of product architecture, both solutions adopt device-side system + cloud system architecture. They provide navigation AI algorithms, navigation computing platforms, binocular inertial sensing sensors, system driver MCU, power management, and human-computer interaction on the device side. The system and the cloud provide various software and hardware services including business management, status monitoring, scheduling management, map management, etc., achieving a one-stop solution to the development needs of robots.
Based on the INDEMIND robot collaboration open platform, any standard-compliant robot equipment can achieve multi-machine communication with other robots under the platform to ensure safe and efficient collaborative work in the same environment and avoid interference and accident risks. At the same time, in terms of operations, it supports location information sharing, autonomous scheduling, coordinated operations, etc.
Taking multi-robot cleaning as an example, the INDEMIND robot collaboration open platform can issue different tasks to different robots based on the differences in the operating areas (such as dining areas, shopping areas, office areas, and different scenes in the same area, etc.) to achieve multiple tasks. At the same time, when some robots malfunction, tasks can be assigned to other robots to perform filling operations to avoid omissions, etc., effectively solving the operational defects of existing robots.
It is worth mentioning that the solution also has unique advantages in terms of intelligent functions. Based on stereo vision technology, the solution can monitor and identify obstacles in the entire area and scenes in different areas, and construct semantics in real time based on the identified semantic information. map. In terms of obstacle avoidance, in addition to static obstacles, it can also effectively identify suspended obstacles, moving obstacles, etc., and update the map in real time during use to correct the running route. At the same time, INDEMIND has specially developed intelligent decision-making engine technology, which combined with the powerful perception & cognitive capabilities brought by stereo vision technology, can realize a variety of intelligent functions such as active safety, intelligent operation, and natural interaction.
In addition, the robots equipped with the two solutions do not need to be pre-deployed and can be used out of the box. They support multi-layer maps and are equipped with intelligent elevator control systems to achieve flexible operations on multiple floors.