"Smart logistics has entered an outbreak stage under the spread of the new crown pneumonia epidemic." Dr. Kai-Fu Lee, chairman and CEO of Innovation Works, said in an interview with the media recently.
In Kai-fu Lee's view, logistics and transportation not only affect people's daily life, but also an indispensable link for industrial production.
As an "infrastructure-based" industry that supports people's livelihood and ensures the flow of production factors, the logistics and transportation industry urgently needs to transform and upgrade to intelligent operations through platform technologies such as artificial intelligence and automation.
"The next generation of smart logistics is one of the core competitiveness of China to ensure the internal economic cycle." Li Kaifu judged.
Market demand gradually enters a blowout period
"Logistics is the blood of manufacturing and material supply. In the manufacturing process, logistics costs account for nearly 30% of production costs." said Lv Feng, founder and CEO of Jiexiang Lingyue.
The company is a manufacturing-oriented robotics company deeply incubated by the Innovation Works Artificial Intelligence Engineering Institute.
Lv Feng told reporters that due to the superposition of multiple factors such as the epidemic and the year-on-year increase in labor costs, manufacturing companies are now more hopeful than ever to use automation solutions to assist manpower, alleviate labor shortages, and ensure the smooth circulation of economic factors.
"The sales volume of the unmanned forklift robot market has increased by 16 times in the past four years, and it has grown rapidly." Lv Feng said, even so, the unmanned forklift has a market share of less than 1% in the entire forklift truck market, and the future market space is huge.
Why are factory owners willing to accept unmanned forklift robot products?
Lu Feng calculated an account: a domestic traditional manual forklift, the lowest price is about 30,000 to 50,000, and the overall labor cost of a forklift worker is about 100,000 a year.
The price of hundreds of thousands of unmanned forklift robots can control the return period of customers to about one year. If unmanned forklifts are applied to the double-shift and multi-shift production scenarios of the factory, the return period will be faster.
Lv Feng believes that the current market demand for unmanned forklift robots has gradually entered a blowout period.
He revealed that the new generation of autonomous mobile robots for unmanned forklifts launched by their company have been applied in many large enterprises, covering industries such as pharmaceuticals, food, and semiconductors.
Due to its positive market prospects, in addition to autonomous mobile robots for unmanned forklifts, the startup is also developing more miniaturized pallet handling robots and robotic products for the cold chain.
Widespread implementation still needs to overcome difficulties
However, the widespread implementation of smart logistics-related products and technologies still needs to overcome many difficulties.
"We've seen almost all the autonomous mobile robot companies on the market," said Huang Songyan, managing director of Linear Capital.
As an investor, he has his own understanding of market demand.
Huang Songyan found that there is a huge demand for autonomous mobile robots in the pharmaceutical and food and beverage warehousing and logistics scenarios, but the requirements are very high.
For example, aisles in a pharmaceutical factory are so narrow that robots and forklifts with too large a turning radius cannot pass.
In addition, the pharmaceutical industry has strict quality management standards for drug production, and the food and beverage industry also has corresponding standards.
Affected by these factors, logistics automation in the pharmaceutical and food and beverage industries has not been well resolved.
"To solve such problems, the founding team and founders of autonomous mobile robots need to have a good understanding of the problems and needs of the scene, and have a deep understanding and cognition of robotics." Huang Songyan said.
Some more subdivided scenarios currently lack better smart logistics products.
Lv Feng's research found that workers in the cold chain industry have poor working environment and work experience, low staff stability and high turnover rate, and worker replacement is a pain point in the industry.
But at present, the cold chain industry still lacks better autonomous mobile robot products.
Standardized production is another challenge.
Lv Feng found that at present, whether it is a mobile handling robot or an unmanned forklift, there is a big problem, that is, the current customization is very common, and there are many project-based and non-standard customizations, which brings great difficulties to the mass production of products. , is not conducive to cost reduction.
In his view, the main challenge to mass production of these products is product standardization.
"We must make products that are very suitable for a certain industry or a few industries, and expand the product from the hardware dimension to tens of thousands or hundreds of thousands of units, and the overall cost can be reduced. Hardware standardization and delivery cases are faster. The higher the standardization of the entire solution, the more willing customers are to use your product." Lv Feng told reporters.
Lv Feng believes that only by digging deep into the pain points of customers and combining their own technical capabilities can they launch products that are very suitable for the needs of the entire industry.
At present, in the logistics industry, the entire mobile robot field is in great need of companies with product innovation capabilities.