Smart Technology: Helping manufacturing and logistics, allowing robots to "open their eyes"

Today's traditional production methods are struggling to cope with the ever-changing market and are facing multiple difficulties. Whether it is a logistics company trying to improve picking efficiency, a manufacturing company upgrading unmanned handling, or a retailer wanting to achieve omni-channel distribution, the current use of automation and intelligent technology to improve production efficiency is the best choice. As a result, the robotics industry, which can significantly improve handling efficiency while reducing labor costs, has grown rapidly.

Currently in the logistics and manufacturing industry, many people are already familiar with the concept of AGV, that is, automatic guided transport vehicle. In a broad sense, AGV refers to an unmanned autonomous transport vehicle based on positioning and navigation technology. Since its introduction in 1953, the guidance technology of AGVs has undergone several iterative upgrades. Since AGVs based on physical guide wire technologies such as magnetic strips in the past were easy to block during multi-machine operations and affected efficiency, later AGVs were more inclined to autonomously perceive obstacles and map information in the environment, even through lidar and visual technology. to solve the navigation problem. And on this basis, AMR (Autonomous Mobile Robot) was born. Only mobile robots with strong autonomy that can respond autonomously to dynamic changes in the environment can be called AMRs.

AGVs usually follow a fixed route and need to update a lot of equipment when changing the route plan, which not only costs extra, but even has to interrupt the production process. In contrast, by detecting the surrounding environment, the AMR that plans its own route can safely detour for newly emerging obstacles, and almost no need to lay and transform the environment when the route changes, which can greatly shorten the pre-deployment time. AMR can easily cope with periodic business adjustments through elastic deployment. Therefore, this highly intelligent and highly flexible mobile robot has become an outlet for artificial intelligence to land vertically in the industry. According to InteractAnalysis data, in 2018, global shipments of AMRs exceeded 20,000 units, doubling that of 2017. China is one of the countries with the most obvious growth in the Asia-Pacific region. The global AMR market is expected to explode to $7 billion by 2023.

In the opinion of Qi Ou, founder and CEO of ForwardX, robots with artificial intelligence capabilities such as computer vision and autonomous mobile work will become the backbone of the warehousing and logistics industry. .

The sword refers to AMR

Qio has worked in Microsoft Asia Research Institute, SAP and Oracle for many years, and has accumulated rich experience in robotics-related industries. Before founding Smart Technology, he has been focusing on this field.

According to Qiou's observation, at that time, the core technology of the robotics industry was still monopolized by foreign countries, and there were not many examples of practical applications in the industry. "Beginning in 2015, breakthroughs in computer vision technology have been made, and the development of deep neural networks has enabled robots to 'open their eyes' and perceive the environment with unprecedented capabilities." Since the application cases of the combination of neural network technology and artificial intelligence began to appear, Smelling business opportunities, Qiou decided to enter the field of "artificial intelligence + robots" to start a business, and in 2016, he registered and established a smart technology company in China and the United States.

Lingdong Technology is a global artificial intelligence company, which mainly develops and applies B2B and B2C products, focusing on mobile robots with visual cognitive technology and deep learning technology. In January 2017, the company received an angel round of $1 million financing from AA Investment, and in October of the same year, it received a $10 million A round of financing from Zhongding Ventures and CDH Investments. In December 2018, Smart Technology received 100 million yuan in Series B financing from Lakeside Miles, Bank of Communications International, etc. Smarttech's AMR has implemented unmanned handling and picking solutions in nearly 10 Fortune 500 companies, including DHL, ITOCHU, TCL Electronics, and a listed manufacturing company with a market value of US$2.6 billion, and has signed orders of tens of millions of yuan.

Focus on logistics and manufacturing, and continue to deepen subdivision scenarios

Zio said that the essence of AI is to solve the problem of productivity, and Smart Technology can provide high-efficiency and low-efficiency for logistics links A cost-effective, safe and smart solution.

The earliest product developed by Lingdong Technology is the OVIS luggage for the C-end. Since this product has chosen the technical route of side following, it must develop a technology that can navigate autonomously according to the environmental road conditions. Qiou said: "The core of OVIS is an AMR robot that includes perception, decision-making, and control."

On the basis of OVIS' research and development, Lingdong Technology has built a full-process AMR research and development platform, from sensors , algorithm to hardware structure design, from supplier to mass production to hardware implementation, all the technical links from end to end are opened up. In this process, Smart Technology has positioned itself as an autonomous robot technology platform based on computer vision, hoping to use robots to solve the labor shortage of manual laborers in the United States, Europe, China and Japan, and improve the efficiency of picking and logistics links. Following this line of thinking, the Smart Technology product team has established the direction of focusing on B-end products and cultivating logistics and manufacturing.

With its own robot technology development platform, the technology acquired by Smart Technology in the C-side development process can be shared with the B-side product development team, and the speed of research and development of new products is getting faster and faster. Visual Navigation AMR for B-side.

Qiao said that Smart Technology's AMR solutions have been implemented in many industries such as e-commerce, shoes and clothing, and logistics. At present, Smart Technology's strategy is to focus on the two huge market scenarios of logistics and manufacturing, and continue to cultivate in subdivided scenarios. The needs of customers in different scenarios are very different, and Smart Technology can quickly expand the market, it is based on the leading AMR original technology, accumulated profound industry Know-How (industry secrets), and enterprise service capabilities.

In the logistics industry, Smart Technology has launched in the ITOCHU North China Logistics Strategic Base, the largest third-party logistics provider in Japan. The first warehouse runs 20 AMR robots, providing handling and sorting services for more than 600 clothing stores. It took only 2 weeks for the project to go online, and the picking efficiency was increased by 70%, and the picking accuracy rate was as high as 100%.

In addition to Itochu, a listed manufacturing company in Shenzhen with a market value of US$2.6 billion has also adopted SmartMotion's AMR robot handling solution. Through 30 AMR robots, the first factory realized the two key internal logistics scenarios of production line feeding and tailings recycling. After the project was launched, the raw material transportation capacity has been greatly increased by 30.5%, the labor cost can be saved by 51% every year, and the error rate has been reduced by 90%.

In addition, Smart Technology also signed the Asia's largest AMR intelligent logistics overall solution development and application cooperation strategic agreement with TCL Ace, and plans to deploy 500 AMRs in TCL's factories around the world to help its digital transformation. The project vigorously promotes the implementation of 5G in the industrial field, deploys AMR applications in the 5G environment, and uses 5G and edge cloud computing as a new generation of infrastructure to build a smart factory for unmanned handling and picking for TCL Electronics.

The project is jointly built by China Mobile, TCL Electronics, and Smart Technology to achieve center-edge collaboration, network-wide computing power scheduling, and network-wide unified management and control; and Smart Technology's AMR is here On this basis, key functions such as "intelligent traffic control", "autonomous driving application", "high-precision map application" and "multimedia distribution application" are realized. The project has been shortlisted for the Industrial Internet Benchmarking Demonstration Project for Promoting High-quality Economic Development in Guangdong Province.

Zio said that the goal of Smart Technology is to enable robots to have "deep learning brains", giving them the ability to perceive the environment and move autonomously, so as to continuously empower traditional manufacturing.

Deep learning "unmanned fleet"

According to Qiou, the core technology of Smart Technology is computer vision, as well as autonomous path planning based on artificial intelligence and VSLAM (vision-based Real-time positioning and map construction), etc., and has developed the "Forcos robot perception decision-making platform" based on deep learning and the "f(x) multi-agent scheduling system" based on machine learning.

"The logistics robot of Smart Technology is different from traditional AGV. Since it does not need to rely on preset devices such as QR codes and magnetic stripes on the ground, there is no need to make any changes to the site environment." Qiou said. Smart Technology's AMR mainly relies on 3 ordinary RGB cameras, and realizes positioning and environment understanding based on excellent algorithms for autonomous navigation. On the one hand, because the expensive lidar sensor is replaced in the product, the cost of the sensor can be reduced to hundreds of yuan, allowing enterprises to deploy at a very low cost; on the other hand, Smart Technology's AMR can quickly adapt to complex The change of the environment layout has become an internal unmanned logistics fleet, and the time required for the enterprise to adjust the line has been greatly compressed, and it has a very high flexibility and adaptability.

At present, the management platform deployed by SmartDynamics has been able to manage a fleet of up to 200 AMRs at the same time. It can manage traffic through machine learning, optimize battery management, and achieve all-weather operations. The management platform can also be interconnected with MES and WMS systems to track production capacity and efficiency through a display interface.

Smart Technology's AMR native machine, large-scale cluster scheduling system (200 clusters) and enterprise service capabilities based on original AI technology have formed its long-term technological "moat". Qiou introduced: "The essence of AMR is enterprise services in the era of artificial intelligence. The core is to provide a set of unmanned industry solutions through the collaborative work of large-scale robots, and allow customers to pay back their investment within 2-3 years. Therefore, AMR companies must master the business know-how of logistics and manufacturing, form different solutions for various scenarios, and achieve the best overall operation efficiency in warehouses and factories. Currently, only 3 AMR companies in the world have the ability to provide this The ability to provide solutions.”

Qio believes that the solutions developed by Smart Technology based on AI technology can help customers adapt to the rapidly changing situation and increase productivity and efficiency exponentially. "Facing an uncertain future, companies need to adjust their operation methods to adapt to more challenges, and Smart Technology will help companies in this transformation process."