Chuangbang learned that on April 27, jiexiang Lingyue, an advanced manufacturer of "new generation forklift AMR", announced the completion of nearly 100 million yuan angel round and Pre-A round of financing. Among them, the angel round is jointly invested by Sequoia China Seed Fund, Lenovo Star and Innovation Factory; the Pre-A round is jointly invested by Linear Capital and Challenger Capital, and the old shareholder Sequoia Seed Fund and Lenovo Star follow the investment.

Compared with the traditional rickshaws, automatic forklift AGVs, etc., the world's first unmanned forklift AMR robot independently developed by Jiexiang Lingyue has a number of low-level innovations unique to the industry, with no blind spots, more flexible and safer characteristics, combined with the self-developed IOT and JMS industrial intelligent digital platform, providing intelligent logistics solutions for manufacturing enterprises with software and hardware integration, which can be described as officially revealing that the unmanned forklift industry is moving towards the 3.0 era.

Jiexiang Lingyue is deeply incubated by the Robot Laboratory of the Artificial Intelligence Engineering Institute of the Innovation Workshop, and this round of funds will be mainly used for new product research and development, talent introduction, mass production capacity building and focus on industry expansion.

The epidemic has accelerated the automation of logistics supply, and smart logistics has entered the first year of the outbreak

According to the data of the 2019 Fourth National Economic Census Communiqué, the labor structure of the country is undergoing great changes, the most obvious embodiment of which is that a large number of secondary industry (industry) employees have shifted to the tertiary industry (service industry). Industry is facing an unprecedented "labor shortage". The prolongation of the new crown epidemic has also brought more uncertainty to manufacturing production. Now more than ever, production companies are looking to automated solutions to assist manpower, alleviate the "labor shortage" and ensure the smooth circulation of economic factors.

Logistics assurance is the production of blood. The time spent on storage, loading and unloading, waiting for processing and conveying accounts for 75% of the production and manufacturing, and the logistics cost in the production and manufacturing accounts for up to 30% of the total production cost. The three major trends such as the improvement of labor costs, the flexible production demand of small batches and multiple batches, and the digital and intelligent reshaping of logistics links are accelerating logistics automation, and the inflection point of the industry has arrived.

At the end of last year, the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology and other fifteen departments jointly issued the "14th Five-Year" Robot Industry Development Plan" and proposed that during the "14th Five-Year Plan" period, the density of manufacturing robots doubled. China Mobile Robot (AGV/AMR) Industry Alliance disclosed data that in 2021, Chinese market enterprises sold 72,000 mobile robots for industrial applications (AGV/AMR), an increase of 75.61% over 2020, and market sales reached 12.6 billion yuan (overseas sales of 2.5 billion yuan), an increase of 64% year-on-year. Even so, the market penetration rate of unmanned forklift robots in the entire industry is still less than 1%, and the future market space is huge.

Dr. Kai-Fu Lee, Chairman and CEO of Innovation Factory, said that smart logistics has entered the first year of the outbreak under the new crown. 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 operation through platform technologies such as AI and automation. Logistics and transportation not only affect people's daily lives, but also an indispensable link for industrial automation. China is pushing the world towards intelligent "intelligent" manufacturing, and the next generation of smart logistics is the core competitiveness that allows China to ensure the internal circulation of the economy and lead the global industrial 4.0 revolution. The innovation workshop has been laying out the intelligent transportation track all year round, and Jiexiang Lingyue has steadily practiced the superior capabilities of the new generation of unmanned forklifts in scenarios such as contactless logistics, automated warehousing, and rapid response supply chain.

Ren Bobing, Executive Director of Innovation Workshop and General Manager of Frontier Technology Fund, said: "The Robot Lab of The Artificial Intelligence Engineering Institute of Innovation Workshop has been incubating projects internally since 2018, and we have seen that Lv Feng, the founder of Jiexiang Lingyue, has both foresight and resilience, and the core team led by him has demonstrated strong combat effectiveness and innovation in precise positioning, technical attack and product definition, and in the past year, With excellent market performance, the independent innovation of the 3.0 version of the forklift AMR has a rich landing scenario and a broad market space, and has been recognized by many of the world's top 500 enterprise customers. As unmanned forklifts gradually enter the outbreak period, we are very optimistic that under the leadership of Lv Feng, Jiexiang Lingyue will lead China's unmanned forklift industry into the 3.0 stage and become a dark horse for China's smart logistics solutions. ”

Dr. Huang Songyan, Managing Director of Linear Capital, said: "Intelligent robots are the direction that Linear Capital has been focusing on, and we judge that based on scene problems and needs, new intelligent robots that are redesigned and produced will have huge opportunities in the future, but if you want to do this, you need the founders to have a deep understanding and cognition of industry scenarios and robot technology. Different from the unmanned forklift company in the 2.0 era, Jiexiang's new generation of unmanned forklift AMR is a product with industry innovation significance, which profoundly reflects the team's deep understanding and implementation based on the needs of the pharmaceutical and food and beverage industries, and is of great significance to promoting China's unmanned forklifts into the 3.0 era. So when we see the product, we know that the Jiexiang Lingyue led by Lü Feng is the product and company we want to invest in. Linear is willing to support Jiexiang in the early stage, and will firmly accompany the development of the company for a long time to find the optimal solution for China's smart logistics. ”

The optimal solution of smart logistics: version 3.0 unmanned forklift

The core team of Jiexiang Lingyue comes from alibaba DAMO Academy, Huawei, China Mobile, Meituan and other well-known enterprises, and has many years of R&D and engineering experience in the direction of robotics. Jiexiang CEO Lv Feng has 15 years of experience in the field of robotics, and has held important positions in Alibaba DAMO Academy and Innovation Workshop Artificial Intelligence Engineering Institute, leading the development of a number of cutting-edge robot technologies and products at home and abroad

In Lü Feng's view, forklifts have gone through two generations. Forklift version 1.0 is a manual forklift truck, which has been born in 1920 for more than 100 years. Version 2.0 is the forklift AGV. In the context of automation, the manual forklift 1.0 has been upgraded to forklift version 2.0 (that is, forklift AGV) through modification, which meets certain automation needs through two ways: anti-laser navigation and non-reflection laser navigation.

"The 2.0 version of the forklift AGV cannot break through the limitations of driving space, operating efficiency, safety and other aspects caused by the overall design and movement of the manual forklift, and its essence is still a traditional forklift." Lv Feng analysis.

"Unlike the previous two generations of manual forklifts and forklift AGVs, the new generation of unmanned forklift ARM developed by Jiexiang Lingyue redefines the traditional products already on the market, which can be called the 3.0 version of forklifts." Lu Feng said.

Jiexiang Lingyue forklift AMR has a number of industry-first low-level independent innovations:

First, there is no blind spot. The manual forklift and forklift AGV have a blind area of 25% and 40% respectively, while the AmR of the Jiexiang Lingyue forklift completely reconstructs the forklift form, so that the sensor layout can be more reasonable, ensuring that it can achieve full coverage of 360 ° perception and no blind area of vision.

Second, be more flexible. The AMR is smaller than the previous two generations of forklifts, and can be rotated in situ, with strong flexibility and passability.

Third, it is safer. In the United States, a forklift has a 90% probability of being involved in a serious accident during its lifetime. Jiexiang forklift AMR breaks the inherent shape of traditional forklift trucks for many years, and the "U" extreme compact design makes the forklift and cargo always become an integral operation, so that the running forklift has better safety protection. At the same time, the forklift truck's empty full load center of gravity coincides, which brings better operational stability and higher efficiency. Lu Feng said.

In addition to the forklift AMR, Jiexiang Lingyue is also supplemented by platform-type handling robots and JMS industrial intelligent digital platforms, providing a comprehensive solution for intelligent logistics that integrates software and hardware, which is suitable for the whole process of material flow in the manufacturing field. Lv Feng said: "Jiexiang Lingyue's intelligent logistics solution is oriented to intelligent manufacturing, through personalized configuration, flexible embedding of business processes, can be integrated with existing or future automation tools, effectively reduce deployment costs." It can make the customer's material flow and information flow smoother, more efficient and simple, and the production more flexible, helping industry customers to truly achieve cost reduction and efficiency. ”

So far, the new generation of unmanned forklift AMR has been applied in many of the world's top 500 enterprises, industry leaders and hidden champion enterprises, mainly covering pharmaceutical, food, semiconductor and other industries. The recognition and cooperation of a number of leading investment institutions has also provided firm confidence and support for Jiexiang Lingyue to become a new dark horse in the forklift industry.

"In the future, Jiexiang Lingyue will continue to adhere to the advanced manufacturing path of independent innovation and specialization, deepen the manufacturing industry, and land to a broader application scenario through the 3.0 generation of unmanned forklift trucks." From program design, robot selection, scheduling configuration, rapid response and deployment, personalized business needs and other links to empower customers' intelligent manufacturing upgrades, use automation to change the century-old handling history, and create the optimal solution of China's smart logistics. Lu Feng said.