CurveRobot recently announced that it has obtained a multi-million yuan angel round investment from Yuanwang Capital. After this round of financing, CurveRobot plans to expand its research and development team, establish a research and development center, accelerate iteration of related software and hardware, and reduce product costs in order to be applicable to more Customers and application scenarios.

CurveRobot is an innovative enterprise combining 3D vision and industrial robot applications. It has developed the first 3D robot product for door and window spraying in China, pioneering the flexible coating of furniture doors and windows. Thanks to the team members in 3D With a deep technical background in the field of vision and robot motion control, the first domestic 3D intelligent spraying robot has been successfully developed for 1 year and successfully applied to leading enterprise customers in the door and window industry.

Cheng Hao, founding partner of the investor Yuanwang Capital, said, "The replacement of manpower by robots is a big trend. Spraying is one of the very typical and valuable scenarios. It has not only economic value but also great social value. CEO money Xin previously worked for eight years in Yaskawa, one of the world's four largest robot manufacturers, and has conducted in-depth research on robots, 3D vision, and motion control systems. The product has been developed for two years and is already in commercial use. "

Low standardization in the home industry, CurveRobot3D vision preempts opportunities

In recent years, China's robot market has exploded. In 2017, domestic robots achieved production and sales of 150,000 units, a year-on-year increase of more than 50%, of which more than 60% of robots are used for handling and welding, while spraying robots are only large. About 6%. Robot application industries are concentrated in the automotive and 3C industries. For some industries with low standardization, robot applications are in the ascendant. For example, home building materials industry, 5 million employees in 50,000 companies, but due to the large variety of products, low standardization, and relatively complicated processes, Therefore, robots have not been applied in large quantities. Especially for the painting of furniture, doors and windows, robot applications are very few. Most of them are traditional manual spraying. The number of workers engaged in spraying in the industry has reached 200,000. In recent years, the labor cost has risen, and people attach great importance to physical health. The increase in environmental protection requirements is driving a large number of applications of spraying robots.

Qian Xin, who has eight years of working experience in Yaskawa Electric, one of the four major robot brands, has accumulated deep experience in robotics and the market, and discovered this gap in the home improvement market. In 2013, he started his own business. After having an understanding of the automotive, 3C and other industries, he chose the home improvement industry as a field that CurveRobot will focus on in the future.

With reference to foreign experience and his own experience in robot motion control, Qian Xin has drawn 3D stereo vision and AI experts from the Institute of Automation of the Chinese Academy of Sciences, a PhD in Computer Science from Peking University, and a Master of Computer Science from Renmin University of China. The core team specializes in the process of smart spraying in the home improvement field.

In the early days, Qian Xin and his team tried to solve this problem with 2D spraying, but 2D can only identify in the plane, and can only use doors and windows on the hanging system. So, CurveRobot finally chose 3D vision. CurveRobot equips robots with 3D vision and intelligent brains. After 2 years of research and development, CurveRobot has successfully developed the first 3D scanning intelligent spraying robot in China. With the 3D scanning detection technology, when the wooden door passes the scanner, the outline of the wooden door is presented in the computer. The AI recognition processing software is used to identify the Position, attitude, shape and other important parameters. After the robot's CAM (Computer Aided Manufacturing) module is used to generate the robot's motion trajectory, the robot then confirms the execution of the spraying motion, thereby achieving intelligent identification and spraying.

Break the difficulties of 3D stereo vision and successfully replace the sprayer

Due to the characteristics of furniture, doors and windows products: many varieties, unfixed dimensions, and low processing accuracy, it is difficult to paint like cars: one programming and debugging can allow robots to spray tens of thousands of cars, in order to achieve flexible spraying production of furniture doors and windows CurveRobot uses 3D laser scanning technology and allows the robot to learn AI. In order to control the motion trajectory, a highly flexible six-axis robot is used.

3D laser scanning technology can project structured light to the scene and capture the corresponding pattern with structured light by the image sensor. Because the pattern of structured light is deformed due to the shape of the object, the position and deformation of the pattern image in the captured image can be used to calculate the depth information of each point in the scene by using the principle of triangle. In addition, the machine has an AI self-learning function, which can learn the size of different doors and windows by learning the basic parameters of doors and windows. Six-axis industrial robots, as the most widely used types of industrial robots, have many advantages such as high flexibility, large loads, high positioning accuracy, etc. The six axes can move more flexibly and meet the robot's motion rules.