In the new energy era, domestic 3D vision impacts the conservative automotive industry

The automobile industry, which has grown up in the context of reform and opening up, has experienced rapid development, but the influx of a large number of Sino-foreign joint venture car companies has also created a conservative background in the industry, and it is natural to reject domestic first-class companies.

The automobile manufacturing industry is one of the industries with mature application of machine vision, but for a long time, the domestic traditional fuel vehicle production line is full of foreign visual equipment, and occupies the best quality application scenarios.

The increasingly strong domestic visual manufacturers will inevitably fall behind in the trade-offs of "imports", "technical recognition" and "mature application cases" of car manufacturers.

There is technology, there is no market", is the unspeakable hidden of the leading domestic visual equipment manufacturers to enter the car factory.

The mature industrial pattern is more dependent on the stable operation under inertia, and the opportunities for innovation often occur at the time of industrial transformation.

Taking the development of the automotive industry as a timeline, from fuel to new energy, the century-old automotive industry is undergoing great changes in intelligence, domestic car companies are rising, and the industrial chain is continuing to be intelligently upgraded.

With the development of domestic visual manufacturers as another line, 3D vision, which started at about the same time as foreign countries, has increasingly reached international standards.

The intersection of the two lines indicates that in the automotive industry, where foreign investors in 2D vision are stubborn, domestic 3D vision companies have gained new opportunities to enter the car factory.

In the era of fuel vehicles, the number of domestic car factories is small, and the machine vision market is not large.

Due to the existence of a large number of joint venture car companies and the preference for foreign businessmen, it is difficult for domestic first-class companies to have a foothold in the world of foreign brands.

The technical threshold is the first ticket, especially for detection and measurement scenarios with high requirements for accuracy and stability, the higher the accuracy, any little external change may affect the results.

The car factory has very strict requirements for the product quality of the first chain enterprise, and on the 24-hour operation of the assembly line, once a vision equipment fails, the entire production line will be forced to stop production, and it may take up to two or three hours to replace a new equipment.

Therefore, car companies will give preference to foreign brands with deep roots, mature application cases, and more advantages in software control algorithms.

There are many scenarios and requirements in the automotive industry, but the core is product stability, which is even more urgent than cost performance. Although the domestic ** is less than half of the foreign brand, many car manufacturers still give preference to foreign brands. Feng Liangbing, CEO of Chenshi Intelligence, said that Chenshi Intelligence is also one of the 3D vision companies that have entered the automotive industry in the past two years.

In Feng Liangbing's view, the gap between domestic and foreign manufacturers in technology and products is a major reason for the low recognition of domestic visual manufacturers.

For example, in the field of visual measurement, the best 3D measurement in the global automotive industry is GOM, which was acquired by Zeiss in 2019, and began to rely on general 3D scanners in the 80s.

GOM is really relying on technology to block the opponent out of the door, with a blue light 3D scanner to do measurement, except for GOM no one can do it, GOM's most high-end equipment measurement accuracy can be stabilized to less than 2um, domestic enterprises will GOM accuracy multiplied by 10, can not be stabilized down. A senior R&D member of a 3D vision company said.

The automotive manufacturing industry is one of the largest manufacturing industries in the world, involving a wide range of manufacturing links and components. In addition to the need for high-precision inspection and measurement, it also includes a large number of loading and unloading, sorting, and assembly work. Relatively speaking, the difficulty of positioning and grabbing is low, and domestic manufacturers are enough to do it.

In order to be recognized in the automotive industry, domestic vision manufacturers also need to overcome extremely high industry thresholds.

The perception of 3D vision products in automobile factories is still in the establishment stage, and the use of visual products for 3D measurement has only gradually emerged in the past decade.

In the early days, the automotive industry used contact CMM for three-dimensional measurement, and Zeiss in Germany and Hexagon in Sweden were the main suppliers, covering almost every automobile OEM and parts factory.

The cost of three coordinates is high, ranging from tens of thousands to hundreds of thousands, and the automobile production process is the standard that has been circulated for several years. Moreover, the results of visual measurement should also be compared with the three coordinates, so that customers can rest assured.

Feng Liangbing said that the automotive industry is very closed, and it first needs to cooperate with the technology center, and go through a long cycle of technology and product inspection, step by step from the laboratory, to the experimental line, and finally to the production line.

For car manufacturers, changing the supplier is a very challenging process.

Replacing mature domestic manufacturers that have been verified, whose product stability has been confirmed, and who have formed a tacit understanding with car manufacturers, with start-up domestic manufacturers whose products have not yet been verified and need time to run in, will undoubtedly increase costs and risks.

When domestic manufacturers docked with car manufacturers a few years ago, the first question they were asked was: "Have you done it in other car factories before?" ”

This is a portrayal of the survival of similar visual companies in China at that time.

Chenshi Intelligent got the first 3D order for the whole line, and it also went through a long and arduous process.

With a similar case in the parts factory, Chenshi Intelligent first got the opportunity to enter the laboratory of the main engine factory, after rigorous performance testing, this entered the experimental line to do some loading and unloading grabbing, positioning and guidance of auxiliary work, running-in for up to a year and a half, until trouble-free production, before the official launch of the transformation of the entire production line.

For a long time, the domestic automotive industry has dominated foreign visual equipment, which still accounts for 70-80% of the domestic automobile market, and occupies a large number of high-quality scenes, such as the positioning of vehicles with greater value.

Around 2020, domestic products will officially enter the application of car factories, and the process of domestic substitution, although it has only taken two or three years, these achievements are hard-won, and only people in the industry can deeply understand.

In the automotive industry, Yiwei was the earliest and the largest, and it focused on car factories at the beginning of its establishment. At present, there is a certain scale of application in the car factory, mainly Yisvi, Mechmind, and Seebit. Feng Liangbing said to Lei Feng.com.

The first to open up the situation and seize market share from foreign companies such as Bursay and ISRA was Yi Siwei.

Wu Wei, a former employee of E-Sivi, believes that the threshold of the automotive industry is high, and the reason why E-Thinking can be quickly promoted in all car factories in a few years is to rely on industry understanding, relationship and all-round service to customers, which also roughly summarizes the growth path of E-Siwei.

It is not easy for domestic manufacturers to be recognized by car companies, and one of the major reasons for restricting domestic manufacturers from entering the automotive industry comes from the understanding of the industry.

Easy Thinking has a clear positioning, digging deep into the automotive industry, and doing what customers need.

ESVI's understanding of the automotive industry comes from the State Key Laboratory of Precision Testing Technology and Instruments of Tianjin University. In the 90s of the last century, the laboratory did visual application work in FAW. At the beginning of 2000, the laboratory teacher led the students to establish the predecessor of E-Sivi, "Aviation E-Siwei", specializing in intelligent vision in the automotive field, and accumulating experience from scattered projects little by little. Guo Yin, who served as an associate professor in 2016, saw the prospects of the automotive industry and led several brothers to formally establish Yiswei, and then started a full-time business.

Although the background of the core team is very good, as a relatively unknown start-up, it was difficult to gain the trust of customers at the beginning of its establishment, so it looked for a lot of relationships inside and outside the industry, and at the same time won the favor of customers with **, technology and service.

Obtaining the cooperation of the Fourth Design and Research Institute of Machinery Industry of China Automotive Group is an important step in the initial stage of easy thinking.

After cooperating with Yi Siwei, the China Automotive Fourth Institute will not be able to dock foreign products well in new scenarios such as gluing testing to Yi Siwei, after this layer of relationship is opened, China Automotive Fourth Institute will promote Yi Siwei to many automobile OEMs.

The advantage of Yisi is also that at the end of the market, there is also a real resource docking.

On the one hand, take advantage of low prices to grab orders.

Around 2017, the automotive industry basically used Bursay's visual equipment, although the product is not as good as Bursay, but it is cheaper than more than half of Bursay, and the price reduction strategy has enabled E-Siviet's business to start rapid growth.

On the other hand, serve customers well.

Shanghai, Changchun, Xi'an, Changsha, Chongqing ......ESVIK has offices in almost every city with an automobile factory, and the technical service team is stationed near the automobile OEM throughout the year, and can be on call at any time to provide "nanny-style" accompaniment once there is a problem at the customer's site.

Wu Wei made an analogy: "If there is a problem with grabbing the product, Yi Siwei will not stop the production line even if he sends someone to grasp it on the spot." Although the stability of foreign equipment is high, once there is a problem, it is likely that foreign engineers will need to come in person, and foreign engineers will not work overtime, which is the most headache for domestic car companies. ”

Through "spelling ** + spelling service", Yisi has slowly squeezed out of the domestic market for foreign companies such as Bursay.

This can be seen as a microcosm of the efforts of domestic visual manufacturers to squeeze into the automotive industry.

Feng Liangbing summarized several key points for domestic manufacturers to break through in recent years:

First, it has more advantages in cost performance;

Second, the performance has reached the same quality as foreign equipment, and has been verified by the vehicle manufacturer;

The third part of the scene that is not covered by foreign equipment, domestic visual companies are developing product coverage.

With the rise of the domestic new energy vehicle market, a large number of new production lines, as well as the oil-to-electric production lines that traditional car companies continue to follow, provide an opportunity for domestic visual manufacturers to enter the automotive industry.

In the past two years, the domestic 3D vision industry has suffered in the non-standard industry and the endless involution, and in order to compete for limited living space, this still small market has prematurely turned into a red ocean.

However, the automotive industry is different, because the structure of the car is the same, the production lines are similar, and the products have stronger replicability. And, before the arrival of the new energy boom, the automotive industry was considered an asset-heavy, hard-earned industry, with large companies dismissing it and small companies being daunted, and only a few companies working hard and not fiercely competitive.

With the advent of new energy, many new faces have appeared in this track, including Mechmind, which was mainly in the field of logistics grabbing, and Sightbit, which has many layouts in the field of heavy industry.

The new latecomers are taking root in the automotive industry step by step through dislocation competition; The first entrants also checked and filled in the gaps, stepped up to protect their own territory, and slowed down the pace of other vision companies to enter the automobile OEMs.

On the technical route, for example, Mechmind and Chenshi Intelligent use 3D sinusoidal structured light to position the workpiece, which is mostly used to grab the upper piece. This is different from the multi-purpose technical route of easy thinking, which mainly does vehicle positioning and detection.

Chenshi Intelligent has gradually switched from the loading and grabbing of some crankshafts and sheet metal parts in the parts factory to the loading and unloading of the vehicle factory, and at the same time gradually pushed forward the upstream and downstream products such as quality inspection.

In terms of scenarios, as competitors enter and the market becomes narrower and narrower, everyone also starts to do subdivided scenarios that have no previous layout from large-volume scenarios.

Yi Siwei began to do disorderly grabbing, and it was in the automotive industry that he was wary of Mechmind's performance.

The largest proportion of Yisi in the car factory is the orderly guidance of products, followed by gluing detection and measurement, Mechmind is good at disorderly grasping as a breakthrough to enter the automobile market, which is the short board of Yisi.

Not only that, according to Nuggets, in the first half of 2023, Mechmind's measurement products are already under development. The line scan camera was also officially launched at the end of the year, and some inspection cases have already been obtained.

By grabbing to slowly achieve detection and measurement, step by step to carve up the original market share, for the 3D vision companies that are deeply involved in involution, it may be a new export.

After all, the automotive industry has a relatively large shipment volume, and the added value of customers is also higher than that of other small manufacturers. Xiao Zang, an industry insider, said to Leifeng.com.

The track gradually became lively, and there was more gunpowder smell, and low-price order grabbing incidents occurred from time to time.

In 2022, Yisi was responsible for modifying the algorithm for a certain car factory, and the on-site demonstration effect was very good at that time, and the other company was inferior to Yisi in terms of effect, speed, and quality, but in order to win the order, in the case of similar costs, the other party directly hit ** to 1 3 of Yisvi.

This is a typical story of "the snipe and the clam compete, and the fisherman profits": Yi Siwei loses orders, small companies lose profits, and car factories pick up cheap and do not take any risks.

Since this project is a new plant, mass production has not yet begun, and there is at least more than half a year from trial production to official production.

If the company meets the criteria, the manufacturer can save two-thirds of the cost; If it does not meet the standard, the car factory still has a way to go "return without paying", and sometimes customers are naturally willing to cooperate and try it.

From another point of view, this kind of "malicious competition" is also a helpless move for late entrants.

Generally speaking, there are countless difficulties in the process of cooperating with a new project between vision equipment manufacturers and car companies, and it takes a lot of time for on-site commissioning, and the accompanying time can even be as long as one or two years.

In this case, for companies that enter late, either the relationship is hard enough, or cheap enough, otherwise the auto OEM will not try at all.

In the automotive industry, the big growth point of visual equipment is mainly concentrated in new factories and new lines in the field of new energy.

The production line of traditional car factories has either been finalized, and the opportunities for new machine substitutes have been almost tapped; Either there is overcapacity and there is no big need to transform the production line.

In stark contrast, there are many new and renovated production lines of new energy vehicle factories, with insufficient production capacity and high demand.

Ideally, it used to produce less than 10,000 units a month, but now it aims to produce 40,000 units a month. Sales continue to grow, and now factories are also being built. Xiao Zang said.

Feng Liangbing's biggest feeling now is that the demand of new energy vehicle factories for visual enterprises is undergoing new changes

First, the demand for testing and measurement is gradually expanding;

Second, with the advancement of unmanned production lines, there are more and more cooperation between vision and other equipment. For example, in terms of positioning guidance, from the fixed vehicle, to the fixed workpiece, to the fixed material frame.

The third is that the production of car factories is more flexible, in the past, the same production line only produced one model, and now the same production line requires the production of a variety of models, which gives 3D vision companies the opportunity to better adapt to flexible production. The use of 3D vision by car manufacturers means that when changing models, they only need to adjust the vision-guided grasping program without adjusting any hardware equipment.

The promotion of new energy that began in 2020 has reversed the crisis of the automobile industry chain, and the recent cooling of new energy has once again made the industry worry about whether the crisis of the decline of the traditional automobile manufacturing industry will be repeated in new energy.

Now the domestic production of new energy vehicles is almost 10 million, but the use is not so large, new energy continues to expand, and soon the production capacity will be saturated. ”

With this in mind, quite a few companies choose to walk on multiple legs and spread their efforts to other industries. For example, Yiwei began to cut into the rail transit industry and do some visual inspections of subways, railways, and high-speed railways; At the same time, Chenshi Intelligent is deeply involved in many industries such as automobiles, heavy industry, and logistics.

In the face of the automotive industry, perhaps there is no need to be too pessimistic.

The car factory belongs to the field of intelligent manufacturing with a high level of intelligence, and the current visual equipment does not account for a large proportion of the equipment of the car factory.

For example, most of the car factories are still a combination of "human + robot", and if it is completely unmanned in the future, there will be a larger potential market. In addition, there are many scenarios where vision equipment cannot be applied in the car factory due to technical limitations, such as the installation of tires, seats, and wires in the assembly workshop, which is currently done manually.

In the automotive industry, many scenarios cannot find suitable domestic equipment docking, and foreign products can be truly replaced, and domestic visual enterprises need to continuously improve their technology, come up with excellent stability, and pass the strict test of the main engine factory.