In the spring of 2023, the rapid rise of generative artificial intelligence represented by ChatGPT provides a new imagination space for the integration and innovation of artificial intelligence technology and traditional industries.
The vigorous development of artificial intelligence is bringing new empowerment to all walks of life. To this day, almost no one would deny that the era of AI was destined to come. In other words, intelligence is the dictate of the times, and most enterprises have to consider how to catch the train of the times.
On November 29, the 2023 Artificial Intelligence Computing Conference opened in Beijing, and the "Chinese Artificial Intelligence Computing Power Development Assessment Report" released at the meeting showed that at present, 67% of Chinese enterprises have begun to explore the application opportunities of artificial intelligence or have begun to invest relevant funds, and the application of artificial intelligence technology in China has entered an accelerated stage.
New technologies such as artificial intelligence, Internet of Things, and big data have become an irreversible trend in the intelligent era, among which, the intelligent service robot market with optical imaging, light display, and optical perception as the core technology is rapidly expanding and accelerating its penetration in various industries.
According to the "2024-2030 China Intelligent Service Robot Industry Development Status and Investment Potential** Report" released by Huajing Industry Research Institute, in recent years, the global market size of intelligent service robot products and solutions has increased from US$11.4 billion in 2018 to US$23.5 billion in 2022, with a compound annual growth rate of 198%。
At the beginning of 2023, the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology and other 17 departments clearly stated in the "Notice on Printing and Distributing the Implementation Plan for the Application of "Robot +" that by 2025, the density of robots in the manufacturing industry will double compared with 2020, the depth and breadth of application in the service robot and special robot industry will be significantly improved, and the ability of robots to promote high-quality economic and social development will be significantly enhanced.
As one of the ultimate expressions of AI hardware, robots are highly integrated with multiple technologies, with extremely high complexity, high requirements for software and hardware, and the integration and implementation of various industry scenarios is also the top priority of continuous exploration in the industry.
In the intelligent robot track, as an AI robot + industry intelligent service solution service provider, Xiaoben's outstanding performance in the vertical field is exemplary.
Focus on vertical subdivisions and be a "precise" robot
Founded in 2016, iBen is committed to providing enterprise customers with intelligent robot solutions and cloud platform services through the AI-enabled cloud-pipe-end model.
Unlike many technology companies that have self-developed large models and aim at the large and full C-end market, iBen has been focusing on certain vertical segments, including exhibition hall explanations, hospital guidance, government affairs halls, etc.
At present, iBen's products are mainly divided into three series: the "Smart Series" of robots with intelligent interaction, the "Smart Series" of tool robots that replace a single type of work, and the special robots for railway systems.
"Zhi series" is mainly used in government affairs halls, banks, science and technology museums, museums, for welcome reception, to improve the service image and service quality. A typical application scenario is: to replace the interpreter to provide intelligent explanation solutions for the exhibition halls of enterprises and institutions.
The "Hui series" is used in scenarios such as disinfection, cleaning, and supermarket inventory, including intelligent inventory robots, cleaning robots, and disinfection robots. For example, during the epidemic, he took the disinfection robot to the front line of the anti-epidemic and replaced the disinfectant to disinfect various indoor public places - for this reason, iBen also got a letter of commendation from the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology.
The special robot for the railway system vividly reflects the insight ability of iBen in the "precise scene". Its products are engaged in high-speed rail skin cleaning, chassis inspection and other work - behind the scenes that few consumers know, engaged in specific types of work.
It can be seen that creating valuable robot products in these vertical fields and providing corresponding solutions is the power of iBen. In other words, accurate application scenarios and pragmatic implementation are also the background colors of iBen.
From "useful" to "easy to use", be a "pragmatic" robot
At present, despite the rapid development of artificial intelligence, consumers' perception of intelligent robots is not direct and obvious.
For example, hotel delivery robots can only replace some repetitive and mechanical work, and fail to fundamentally reduce costs and increase efficiency for merchants, but have become a gimmick to create differentiated hotel services.
For iBen, only by deeply understanding the requirements of the scenario can we create a product that is truly useful for the scenario. A robot product should not only be useful, but also easy to use, and be able to be pragmatically implemented to solve the specific needs of the industry.
Taking the exhibition hall explanation scene as an example, specifically, in human-computer interaction, iBen's intelligent explanation robot can establish an industry field recognition and intention recognition model for user dialogue based on big data, and at the same time, combined with the "5G cloud brain", it can realize easy intelligent question answering, language inference, sentiment analysis, semantic similarity, named entity recognition, etc., and accurately conduct more than 1V V multi-round dialogues with the audience.
Of course, the core is the "explanation" advantage of the little Ben intelligent robot. Compared with the docent, the long-term cost of the robot is significantly lower, and the follow-up business training only needs to be learned almost once, which can greatly reduce the personnel cost of the exhibition hall and optimize the management. It can even realize the integrated control of sound and light in the entire exhibition hall, so as to improve the effect of explanation.
In the railway cleaning scene, the traditional practice is to use a mop and a high-pressure water gun to flush manually, and the time for 25 people to wash an 8-car standard EMU is about 45 minutes, while the use of Xiaoben intelligent robot can achieve "1 equipment + 2 people" to complete the cleaning of the skin of the whole high-speed rail within 20 minutes, and its advantages are self-evident.
In addition, iBen can also rely on mature software and hardware technologies to achieve exclusive customization for the different needs of different scenarios, such as customizing the "Jinbao Robot" for the ExpoCustomize the "Midea Bear Robot" for Midea Group, etc., and get closer to customers through an approachable IP image.
We are the first company in China to propose service robots, and if we want to solve the value of customers' rigid needs, we must take a customized route. Yang Peng, CEO of iBen, said, "We hope to create valuable robot products and solutions in these vertical fields, which can solve problems in customer scenarios, rather than a pure gimmick product." ”
From "cloud pipe end" to "customized project standardization", iBen has accelerated its rapid operation
In 2018, iBen put forward the concept of "cloud-pipe-end robots", which has been persisted to this day.
This means that the standard products of iBen intelligent service robots have the ability to be delivered remotely, as long as the robot arrives at the customer's site, the customer can unpack and turn on the machine, and the staff will turn on the computer to connect to the robot and remotely deliver and control the entire equipment.
For example, if the content of the exhibition hall changes, he does not need to go to the exhibition hall to open the robot and plug in the USB to change the robot, he only needs to sit in the office and turn on the computer to connect to the robot host, and edit the business logic directly on the cloud server. For example, Yang Peng said, "This can greatly reduce the operation and delivery costs and after-sales costs brought by our later laying." ”
The product technology architecture derived from this concept makes iBen's products "lightweight", thereby improving delivery efficiency.
In addition, for a TO B enterprise, iBen focuses on realizing various customized needs of customers, and based on this, the concept of "standardization of customized projects" is proposed.
Over the years, iBen has continued to invest in technology research and development, and has precipitated fruitful results in the fields of AI smart box, indoor unmanned driving technology, indoor navigation technology, NLP algorithm and visual recognition algorithm, and can be integrated from product industrial design, hardware research and development, business software system construction and mass production manufacturing.
These technologies and capabilities are built into the "standardized modules" of iBen, and support in-depth customization of functions and secondary development, such as the customization of software business systems and the design and production of shell images, to meet the needs of different users in different usage scenarios.
As a result, iBen has been able to greatly improve the efficiency and practicability of product development.
In 2019, it took less than 2 months for iBen to complete the on-site deployment of 60 customized robots at the Expo.
At the beginning of 2020, iBen spent two hours during the Spring Festival and decided to realize the mass production of disinfection robots, and its disinfection robots were quickly operated by operation and delivery personnel with equipment and protective clothing in Wuhan.
Today, iBen has already built a full-chain service capability covering industrial design, structural design, intelligent hardware research and development, intelligent software development, AI service capabilities, and manufacturing, and has served more than 10,000 government enterprises, medical care, airports, high-speed rail and other enterprises and institutions.
At present, driven by a new generation of artificial intelligence, the robot industry is developing rapidly.
According to the "China Robot Industry Development Report (2023)", the scale of China's robot market will reach 17.4 billion US dollars in 2022, with an average growth rate of 22% in 5 years, and the scale of service robots will reach 6.5 billion US dollars in 2022, and it is expected to exceed 10 billion US dollars in 2023.
According to Frost & Sullivan, the market size of China's intelligent service robot products and solutions in 2022 will be 51.6 billion yuan in terms of sales revenue, and the compound annual growth rate in this field is expected to reach 235% high growth.
In the face of the ever-changing market environment and the needs of the industry, how to deeply analyze the pain points faced by traditional industries around the needs of the whole industry will become a breakthrough for track players.
As the "Notice on Printing and Distributing the Implementation Plan for the Application of "Robot +" proposes to "......Break through more than 100 kinds of robot innovative application technologies and solutions, and promote more than 200 typical robot application scenarios with high technical level, innovative application modes and significant application results. Create a number of "robot +" application benchmark enterprise ......”
For robot companies, it may be the broadest road to innovate and integrate with various industries, focus on customer needs, and empower industry applications.