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Four years after its establishment, six rounds of financing, and batch delivery of core products to leading companies in many industries, why did this 3D vision and Industrial software company come out of the circle?we talk to the bitrobotDr. Wenping Deng, CEO, will reveal to you the winning code behind this 3D vision and industrial software company’s rise against the trend.

Deng Wenping, CEO of Seebit Robot, born in 1981, holds a bachelor’s and a master’s degree in computer science from the National University of Defense Technology, a doctorate jointly trained by the National Defense University of Technology and the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology (ETH Zurich), and a computer system expert.

“The Spring Festival in 2020 is unforgettable. When the epidemic was the worst, the industry’s first intelligent cutting and sorting production line based on ‘AI+3D vision’ landed in Sany Heavy Industry No. 18 Lighthouse Factory. The production line was delivered urgently, and the industry could With very little technology and experience for reference, more than a dozen core technical backbones of the company took the initiative to give up the Spring Festival vacation on the 30th of the New Year and the first day of the first lunar month. ”——Dr. Deng Wenping, CEO of Seebit robot

Four years after its establishment, six rounds of financing, and batch delivery of core products to leading companies in many industries, why did this 3D vision and industrial software company come out of the circle? We talked to Dr. Wenping Deng, CEO of Vision Robotics, to reveal the winning code behind the bucking trend of this 3D vision and industrial software company.

The inflection point of the 3D vision industry has reached

GGII data shows that in 2021, China willmachine visionThe market growth rate exceeded 45%, of which the 2D vision market size was about 11.72 billion yuan, and the 3D vision market size was about 1.151 billion yuan. It is estimated that by 2025, the scale of China’s machine vision market will exceed 38 billion yuan, of which the 3D vision market will exceed 10 billion yuan, and the penetration rate will increase rapidly.

Deng Wenping said that at present, China is moving from a manufacturing power to a manufacturing power, but it still faces many challenges. We are still controlled by others in advanced manufacturing, core components, and industrial software. The manufacturing process of high standardization and single product specification has been automated, while the flexible manufacturing requirements of small batches, large batches and customization have put forward new requirements for automation. How to make the automated production line intelligent and adapt to the production scenarios of various specifications of products is the biggest difficulty at present.

3D vision and industrial software, as the key elements to enable flexible manufacturing of automated production lines, have been applied in batches in industries such as heavy industry, automobiles, logistics, semiconductors, and new energy, and are already at an inflection point that is about to explode.

Visionbit Robot, established in 2018, is the leader of this new track. With years of research and accumulation in the fields of computer vision, robotics, digital twins, cloud computing big data, etc., SVBT Robots are rapidly developing in 3D vision algorithms, robot flexible control, hand-eye synergy, production-line-level robot collaboration, factory-level intelligent planning and It has established an international leading edge in scheduling and other aspects, and its global business has expanded rapidly. It has won 6 rounds of financing within 4 years of its establishment, and has obtained funds from Jingwei Venture Capital, CICC Capital, Heyu Capital, Turing Ventures, China Merchants Xingxiang, Tongwei Capital, Favored by many investment institutions such as Daosheng Capital and Dieter Investment.

Take the difficult and correct road, and deeply cultivate heavy industry and automobile intelligent manufacturing

Relying on the industry-leading 3D vision core algorithm and industrial-level system software capabilities, Seebit Robot has taken the lead in overcoming industry problems such as flexible intelligent sorting production lines in heavy industry manufacturing and online high-precision measurement of large-sized workpieces in automobiles. Impossible” became “probable”.

In 2020, Seebit Robot has landed the industry’s first set of automatic intelligent blanking and sorting production line for steel plate cutting in Sany Heavy Industry No. 18 Lighthouse Factory. “On the 30th of the Lunar New Year and the first day of the first lunar month, more than a dozen core technical backbones of the company took the initiative to ask Ying to give up the Spring Festival vacation, and fought all night at the customer site. situation.

In the past, heavy industry manufacturing steel plate cutting, blanking and sorting relied on manual operations for a long time, and the production efficiency was extremely low. At the same time, the harsh working environment also had great potential safety hazards.

“In the lighthouse factory of Sany Heavy Industry No. 18, Sybit Robot adopts self-developed 3D vision technology and multi-robot intelligent collaborative control software to realize robot adaptive and flexible sorting and intelligent planning and stacking, and solve tens of thousands of steel plate cutting parts. The fully automatic and flexible sorting problem has greatly improved the production capacity and liberated people from heavy and dangerous manual labor. Taking the difficult and correct path, technological innovation is the magic weapon for enterprises to stand out quickly.” Deng Wenping told reporters.

After the first set of intelligent cutting and sorting production line was successfully put into production, it quickly promoted the upgrading and transformation process of the entire heavy industry smart factory. In the past two years, Seebit Robot and a number of general contractors have won Zoomlion, Xugong, Taiyuan Heavy Industry, China Railway Construction, Shaanxi Automobile, Xingbang and other well-known enterprises have orders, with a market share of more than 70%, and the application of 3D vision in the heavy industry has begun to explode.

On-line high-precision measurement of large-sized workpieces in automobiles is another hard “bone” for Spyt robots to attack.

Especially for battery trays of new energy vehicles, it involves the measurement of thousands of feature points. Traditional mechanical inspection tools, three-coordinate measurement, structured light 3D scanning and other dimensional quality inspection methods are time-consuming and inefficient, and cannot meet the quality inspection of factory batch production. need.

In 2020, Seebit Robot will launch an internationally leading and domestically pioneered multi-vision high-precision measurement machine for battery tray detection in leading car companies. The special machine adopts self-developed high-precision feature detection algorithm and 3D visual imaging technology. Multiple cameras take pictures, parallel calculation, and joint measurement of the workpiece to be measured at the same time. On-line measurement of thousands of inspection points such as flatness, symmetry, concentricity, linear distance, wrong and missing installation, etc., perfectly matches the production takt time requirements of automated production lines.

Deng Wenping said: “The multi-eye vision high-precision measuring machine was developed by the team led by SBT’s Doctor Tian team. It took 10 months to successfully develop and deliver the first set. In 2021, more than ten sets were sold. In 2022, the product has been signed. The order volume has also reached tens of millions of yuan.”

From batch landing to accelerating overseas expansion, business is extended to multiple dimensions

Ten years ago, the high-end market of machine vision was monopolized by foreign brands. In recent years, China’s machine vision industry has developed rapidly, and the localization share of major core components has exceeded 70%. What advantages do domestic and foreign manufacturers have?

Deng Wenping commented objectively that from the perspective of visual hardware, compared with European, American and Japanese companies, domestic companies have a certain gap in chip, optical lens, and overall machine performance; but in terms of AI vision algorithms, China has already applied in many fields Achieving corner overtaking.

Deng Wenping further said: “In many application scenarios, national brands have gradually begun to replace imported brands. The reason is that, first, China has a very good soil, each application scenario is oriented to a massive market, and it is in the supply chain. It can penetrate deeply to the lowest cost. Second, China has developed rapidly in AI vision algorithm research, especially the big data of large applications and large scenarios provides ‘fuel’ for algorithm polishing. Third, Chinese enterprises provide services 24 hours a day at any time On standby, to provide customers with the ultimate technical service and after-sales support, foreign brands lack the competitive advantage in response speed.”

In 2020, Seebit Robot will serve a leading domestic customer. Before that, the client had been cooperating with overseas companies, but with the surge in demand for flexible production, some drawbacks gradually emerged: “For the visual needs of relatively low-end standardized scenarios, overseas manufacturers use domestic secondary agents to It can be achieved. But when it comes to core algorithms, when in-depth customization is required for special scenarios, their services are very lag. Every time a place is modified, it is necessary to return to the US headquarters to apply. Sometimes one or two months pass after a process is completed. , which seriously affected the delivery speed. The Sight Robot responded very quickly, and completed the algorithm update and product delivery within two days.”

In 2021, the multi-vision high-precision measurement plane of Sight Robot will go abroad and be delivered to automakers in the Czech Republic and Serbia in batches. The product will land soon.

“In 2023, we will also enter Southeast Asia, forming a triangular pattern of overseas markets in Europe, North America and Southeast Asia.”

3D vision is still in a depression in valuation, and the value of high-barrier companies is highlighted

In this year’s overall downturn in the capital market and increasingly cautious investment, 3D vision continues to gain popularity and has become one of the most popular investment tracks.

According to statistics, since 2022, there have been more than 10 large-scale investment and financing events in the field of 3D vision, and some internet giants have also begun to speed up the deployment of 3D vision business.

In July 2022, Seebit Robot announced the completion of 300 million yuan in Series B financing. This round of financing was led by Jingwei Venture Capital, Dice Investment (Strategic Investment of Hunan Iron and Steel Group), China Merchants Xingxiang, Hongde Investment, and old shareholders. CICC Capital, Heyu Capital, and Tongwei Capital continued to increase their stakes.

At the same time as the attention is drawn, some different voices will also be heard: Is the 3D visual track overheating?

Deng Wenping said firmly: “I don’t think this track is overheated. Although the current valuation of Vision Robot has reached two or three billion, the valuation of Vision Robot is still in a depression.”

Deng Wenping believes that in a track with long slopes and thick snow, the entry of capital can accelerate the growth of enterprises and accelerate the maturity of the track. But if entrepreneurs abuse capital, it may also bring individual valuation bubbles or negative effects.

He will not take the practice of raising money and fighting price wars. “Burn investors’ money to fight price wars should not be the most desirable entrepreneurial logic. I think it is necessary to continuously use technological advantages to reduce dimensionality and deepen cultivation. Through technology and services Continuous optimization, shorten the development cycle, improve deployment efficiency, continuously reduce costs, and then reduce prices, this is the essence of business. Only in this way can customers truly enjoy cost-effective products and services.”

In actual business operations, Deng Wenping has always adhered to this principle.

When many peers choose the hardware field with low technical threshold and serious homogeneity, SBT Robot still insists on focusing on the high-barrier industrial intelligent software field and high-end application scenarios.

At present, most of the domestic structured light 3D camera companies conduct secondary development on the open source imaging algorithm library. To solve the needs of some low-end scenes, it is not difficult to achieve 80 to 90 points in imaging accuracy and adaptability, but to break through higher accuracy and challenge the imaging requirements of more complex scenes, reaching 95 to 99 points, then Deeper accumulation in optical hardware and imaging algorithms is required. Vision Robot aims at difficult and just-needed scenarios in heavy industry, automobile and other industries, and overcomes challenging pain points such as high precision, large field of view, high reflection, and transparent bodies. Deep technical accumulation and super landing ability in other aspects.

Through the deep integration of AI + machine vision technology and difficult industrial scenarios, Seebit Robot has independently developed a “digital twin + cloud native” industrial intelligent software development platform featuring agile development, visual testing, rapid deployment, and continuous operation and maintenance. Create “Industrial Brain, Industrial Eye, Industrial Hand” and realize “software-defined industrial intelligence”.

Relying on self-developed core algorithms and deeply customized products and services, Seebit Robot can quickly sweep the entire industry every time it penetrates into a subdivided application scenario. Its high-quality, high-efficiency and cost-effective industrial intelligent solutions have truly solved the pain points and created new value for the manufacturing industry.

“In every real challenging scenario, we focus on it, deeply serve customers, and solve their actual pain points. I believe that the industrial intelligence software platform and AI algorithm platform that grows on this basis will truly have a future.” Deng Wen Ping said.

An entrepreneur with strategic thinking and deep thinking ability, an enterprise that always focuses on difficult and correct things and has high technical barriers, an infinitely vast and just emerging 3D vision track, the combination of these three is the vision The biggest confidence of Bit Robot’s strength out of the circle.

“The market space for 3D vision is infinitely huge. We must be in awe of this industry, but also of technology, and we must be grateful for the great opportunities given by the country in this era, cherish the trust and resources of customers, and continue to provide Customers provide high-quality, low-cost, fast-delivery intelligent products and services, creating value for customers and the industry.” Deng Wenping said finally.