On April 25, 2021, Shenzhen Camsense Technology Co., Ltd. (hereinafter referred to as: Camsense) announced the completion of its B+ round of financing.
"In the future, the funds will be used for the research and development of new products for sweeping robot sensors, the construction of automated production lines, and the recruitment of R&D talents; at the same time, in the long-term product fields of VR and industrial/medical fields, it will also continue to invest in research and development expenses to continue to build core technical barriers. ” Camsense founder and CEO Christopher told reporters.
Driven by the development of the industry and affected by the epidemic, since 2020, service robots have begun to appear frequently in people's field of vision. The rise of the home economy has made sweeping robots more closely related to people's home life, and this industry will gradually become the future. One of the dominant narratives in the market.
According to industry insiders, the retail sales of sweeping robots in my country will exceed 10 million units in 2021. Attracted by the market prospects, more and more business giants are participating in the layout, and my country's sweeping robot market will usher in rapid development.
At the level of cleaning robot products, Camsense has mass-produced the Camsense X series, the first lidar product used in this industry, in 2018 by virtue of its advantages of focusing on the research and development of monocular vision technology and taking vision sensors as its core products since 2014. At present, the first mass-produced consumer-grade lidar Camsense X1 series has been widely used in various sweeping robot companies, and has successively established cooperative relations with Dreame, 360, Lenovo, Bona, Kingxchip and other companies; then based on market pain points, launched a small The compact lidar Camsense X2 product, with its miniaturized appearance design and fully enclosed cover processing of the belt drive, not only leaves enough internal space for the cleaning robot manufacturer, but also avoids the use of hair entanglement in the home environment. It can be described as sweeping the floor. Another innovative product in the robotics market.
In terms of capital, between 2016 and 2020, Camsense has received investment from Oriental Fortune 4 times in a row. "Since the first investment in Camsense in 2016, Oriental Fortune has continued to invest in Camsense for a total of 5 rounds. In five years, Camsense has become a leading supplier of sweeping robot lidar, and its product performance has been widely recognized by customers. The monthly shipment exceeded 100,000 units. We believe that Camsense's success in the field of sweeping robot lidar is just the beginning of the company's large-scale development, and we are confident that the company will become a full-stack provider of service robot heads." Oriental Fortune said.
It is reported that it is precisely because of Camsense's original area array Senosr+ self-developed ASIC chip technology route that it has become a winner in this "core shortage". The reason is: the consumer-grade area array Sensor in the Camsense solution has a large shipment volume, and the fab has sufficient guarantee for its production capacity, and will not compete with other industrial-grade linear sensor solutions selected by lidars, resulting in many The company is robbing the same supplier for the supply of goods; at the same time, for the main processing chip of lidar, the company's management has predicted the chip shortage situation in advance, and placed a large number of ASIC chip orders to the wafer factory in the fourth quarter of last year. Hundreds of wafers have been locked in production capacity, while TI, ST and GD chips selected by other lidar solutions have become the hardest hit areas for this shortage of cores, and the shortage in the market is very serious. The originality of the solution and the predictability of the market have enabled Camsense to ensure supply even in the chaotic supply chain environment this year, becoming one of the very few suppliers that can supply lidar modules on a large scale. "At present, our daily production capacity has reached 20,000 units." The head of Camsense supply chain told reporters.
Camsense has been carrying out underlying technical reserves at the software level. For example, using algorithms to reduce dimensionality of monocular vision to lidar in the consumer-grade field. According to the person in charge of Camsense products, this year will introduce obstacle avoidance and long-distance sweeping robots. ranging products. This leaves us imagining the boundaries of this company.
