With the product iteration and functional innovation of the sweeping robot track, Camsense provides high-performance, low-threshold lidar solutions, and is committed to providing multi-scene high-precision spatial positioning technology.
With the development of the lazy economy and the home economy, the sweeping robot market has once again ushered in explosive growth.
According to AVC data, in 2020, 6.54 million sweeping robots will be sold, and the sales scale will increase by 18% to 9.4 billion yuan. In addition to being affected by the catalysis of the epidemic, the "spring" of sweeping robots in 2020 will also benefit from the industry's innovation and progress in product technology.
Christopher, the founder of Shenzhen Camsense Technology Co., Ltd. (hereinafter referred to as Camsense), which focuses on visual-spatial positioning sensors, also observed that with the increase in the popularity of sweeping robots, the industry and users put forward higher requirements for its performance and reliability, and at the same time It has also become a driving force for the development of the industry.
针对场景解决痛点，打造消费类产品杀手级应用
As the only product in the home appliance category that moves to complete the work, the sweeping robot needs to have route planning, navigation, obstacle avoidance and other technologies in order to realize the function of autonomous movement, which means that it is highly dependent on the underlying visual technology. Lidar navigation is the most mature and most popular sweeping robot configuration at present, and it is also the core embodiment of the intelligent sweeping robot. From an industry perspective, there are still certain barriers and room for optimization in this technology field.
Judging from the currently widely used geometric ranging schemes such as trigonometry, it is often prone to foreign body intrusion, and users may experience inaccurate positioning and other faults in long-term use. It not only increases the user's time cost and affects the experience, but also causes manufacturers to face after-sales problems such as product repairs and brand reputation. However, the traditional TOF technical solution is not only costly, but also has problems in close-range positioning. With the increasingly fierce competition on the sweeping robot track, manufacturers have accelerated performance upgrades and product iterations, and the market has put forward demands for more complete solutions.
Therefore, Camsense has launched a new generation of two-dimensional dTOF lidar, providing a solution with higher precision and higher reliability, hoping to lower the threshold of lidar application, meet the needs of industry development, and accelerate the promotion of intelligent sweeping robot products. universal.
Solve pain points for scenarios and create killer applications for consumer products
Camsense focuses on monocular visual spatial positioning technology, and has been deeply cultivating the lidar market of sweeping robots for a long time. The previously launched consumer-grade lidar Camsense X1 and miniaturized lidar Camsense X2 have been widely used in different levels of markets. Its low-cost solution lowers the threshold for the application of lidar in sweeping robots and promotes the accelerated development of the sweeping robot industry.
With the changing needs of the industry, Camsense Grinding has launched a new generation of two-dimensional dTOF lidar solutions developed for the application scenarios of sweeping robots - Camsense T3 dTOF lidar ranging radar.
According to Christopher, the current spatial positioning of sweeping robots mainly adopts the triangulation geometric ranging scheme and the TOF lidar scheme. The ranging component of the triangulation scheme determines that there must be gaps in its design structure, and the intrusion of foreign objects such as hair will inevitably occur, which will lead to the failure of the radar. In addition, the accuracy of long-distance ranging is low, and the accuracy will continue to decline with the use of time. question. Although the TOF solution can be sealed, the accuracy of distance measurement at close range is not high, and the distance measurement of obstacles of different colors and materials is inaccurate, and it is only used in high-end products because of the high cost.
Camsense's Camsense T3 dTOF LiDAR not only has the advantages of sealing the TOF solution, but also solves its application pain points. It can deal with different obstacles, and has an accuracy of up to millimeters within 0.6 meters, reaching the accuracy of the traditional triangulation solution. At the same time, it solves the problem that the TOF solution cannot identify the feature code to realize automatic recharging.
Camsense T3 dTOF LiDAR can achieve high-precision positioning at far and short distances, saving the short-range sensors required by traditional TOF solutions and the infrared sensors required for recharging, lowering the threshold for manufacturers to apply LiDAR, and meeting manufacturers’ requirements for lower failure rates. core needs.
The sweeping robot is a price-sensitive consumer electronic product.
In essence, the basic demand of sweeping robots is to replace manual floor cleaning. For mass consumers, there is still a certain upper limit on the price acceptance of this category. According to the research report of Guosheng Securities, nearly 60% of consumers are more willing to accept robot vacuum cleaners below 2,000 yuan. Therefore, to further accelerate market penetration and increase sales, it is highly probable that product pricing needs to be adjusted downwards.
Price adjustment naturally requires top-down coordination in the industrial chain. Christopher admitted that the current TOF solution is still more expensive than the triangulation method, and is only suitable for scenarios with high cost tolerance. However, Christophe believes that as the penetration rate of smart homes increases and more emerging manufacturers enter the sweeping robot industry, the demand for TOF lidar will also increase accordingly. With the development of industry technology and the improvement of scale, the cost of TOF lidar will also decrease rapidly in the future, promoting the popularization of lidar in sweeping robots, and the industry will usher in greater opportunities.
With its accumulation in the field of spatial positioning systems, Camsense has achieved a TOF lidar solution that is more suitable for the sweeping robot scene through the efforts of system design and manufacturing process, and can achieve better performance than similar products at a lower cost.
At present, Camsense has accumulated experience in miniaturized TOF technology and SLAM algorithm map construction technology, and mastered the whole chain technology. In the future, it is expected to enter the 3D TOF market, become a killer application in consumer scenarios such as VR, and enter more application scenarios.
Promote industry integration and innovation and create industry standards
The lidar solution in the field of sweeping robots is the first landing scene of the Camsense spatial positioning system.
As a general underlying technology, lidar has been widely used in various fields since it was first used in autonomous driving in 2004, generating value in the form of different products. Its application in the field of sweeping robots began in 2010 and became popular in 2016. Although Camsense only launched related application products in 2018, the advantages of technology accumulation and production capacity for many years have allowed it to rapidly grow into the leading supplier of the sweeping robot lidar industry. Zhou Kun also said that the application field of Camsense will not stop there.
Relying on its own mature visual-spatial positioning technology, Camsense will also enter consumer scenarios such as VR, and will also conduct in-depth application mining on high-precision positioning systems in medical, manufacturing and other industries.
At present, Camsense has cooperated with head customers, and the VR controller using its spatial positioning system will be available in the first quarter of next year. And the high-precision spatial positioning system for high-end has also been applied in COMAC.
In addition to actively increasing application fields and expanding the track, Camsense has also continued to strengthen the supply chain system, mastering the full chain model from product design, research and development to production and sales, effectively reducing costs and improving product reliability. It also owns the Camsense C1 ASIC image processing chip, a dedicated chip for lidar developed by itself, and has laid out production capacity in advance. In this year's global chip shortage, it has achieved stable supply for users. This has also become a strong barrier for Camsense.
While developing itself, Camsense also hopes to play a more active role in the industry. As an emerging industry, there is currently no unified industry standard for lidar. Camsense hopes to use its advantages in the midstream of the industry chain to connect upstream and downstream enterprises to achieve integrated innovation, jointly promote the formulation of standards for lidar and other related industries, and integrate lidar products. Interface standardization enables the industry to better develop at scale. Camsense also hopes to promote the development of terminal product technology by strengthening intellectual property protection and technology leadership, and achieve popularization and intelligence, so that service robots can better liberate users.
