Text｜Pan Xiaoyu
Editor｜Peng Xiaoqiu
36氪 was informed that the unmanned forklift robot company “Tusk” has received three consecutive rounds of financing of hundreds of millions of yuan, invested by Yilian Ventures, Zhen Fund and Zero One Ventures. The 3 rounds of financing will be mainly used for product research and development, team building and marketing.
In the first half of this year, the story of the overall downturn in the capital market and the price war in the robotics industry continued to occur, but in a sub-track – the field of unmanned forklifts, another trend emerged: a large number of unmanned forklift companies received financing , this track has become hot in the capital market. On the one hand, with the advent of the wave of Industry 4.0 and intelligent manufacturing, as a just-needed forklift, it has reached the node of transformation and upgrading; on the other hand, as the largest single tool in the field of industrial handling, the capital market is also continuing to find its unmanned optimum. untie.
In fact, in the logistics handling process, due to the extremely scattered downstream, a large number of robot companies need to accumulate know-how with a large number of customized solutions, so it is difficult to achieve scale and productization, which is also the key to robot companies falling into involution. Therefore, in the market environment where there is a big price war this year, for robot companies, innovative products and scalable implementation have also become particularly important.
Recently, 36氪 discovered a robot company in Foshan, “Tusk”, which appeared in the field of unmanned forklifts in a new form. Different from the unmanned forklift on the market, Tasker integrates the robot in the form of AGV with the function of unmanned forklift. The product definition by �� is completely different from the traditional forklift. The overall height of the Tasker forklift does not exceed 150mm, so it is also called the invisible pallet robot.
Tasker product form
Tasker’s core founding team has nearly 10 years of experience in the robotics industry and has developed a number of mobile robot products. At present, Tasker has more than 150 patents and software copyrights, and its products are mainly used in 3C, tobacco, medicine, new energy, auto parts and other industries.
As a just-needed link in industrial logistics, forklift handling has a history of nearly a hundred years of development. In recent years, forklifts have also undergone many intelligent iterations. However, most of the unmanned forklifts still use manned forklifts, and the technologies applied to AGV, AMR, etc. are used in forklifts.
However, the modification of a manned forklift still essentially follows the operation logic of man-operated forklifts. Therefore, in terms of structural design and operation efficiency, there are still many problems such as obstacle avoidance safety, operation efficiency, and navigation methods. Different from the operation logic of the robot itself, many forklift constraints caused by structural design still exist in the form of unmanned forklifts.
Based on these problems, Tasker adopted a new design scheme to design the unmanned forklift into a thin and light chassis. The lidar can also be mounted on the chassis, thereby avoiding the obstacle avoidance pain point of the previous modified forklift, realizing 360-degree laser obstacle avoidance, and capable of stereoscopically detecting obstacles as low as 4cm.
At the same time, its special structural design is different from the traditional lurking jacking (kiva-like) robot, which can directly carry the pallet without additional carriers. The advantage of this design is more reflected in the stability of the robot. The cargo can be directly carried on the robot body instead of the fork arm, and the lower center of gravity and larger contact area make the cargo handling more stable.
In addition, due to the abandonment of the original forklift form, this forklift can also realize in-situ rotation and omnidirectional movement, and has no turning radius. Scenes. In terms of operating efficiency, Tasker’s unmanned forklifts can achieve high-speed operation of 1.5m/s, and the operating requirements are smaller than the manual work space, which also improves the operating efficiency to a certain extent.
Tasker Smart Factory Solutions
In terms of standardization, Tasker co-founder Zhang Xueyi told 36Kr that there has always been a standardized carrier-pallet in the logistics handling link. In China, nearly 2 billion pallets are circulated every year, corresponding to the sales of 1 million forklifts and 3 million ground cattle. Therefore, in the pallet handling link, the carrier has been standardized, and there is a large amount of automation demand downstream, which is a huge alternative stock market.
Based on this, Tasker chose to focus on pallet handling. Since point-to-point pallet handling is relatively standard, its robot solution can also be commercialized.
In addition, for the standardization scheme, on the one hand, Tasker has adopted a modular approach in hardware to make its hardware equipment more standardized; on the other hand, in terms of software, Tasker has also designed a low-code system to allow users to Quick deployment can be achieved by dragging and dropping maps, shortening the project implementation cycle to less than one week.
Tasker Products
In most industrial fields, the first requirements of enterprises for robots are stability and safety. The stability here is not only stable operation, but also refers to continuous and stable operation without downtime. At the same time, it can deal with various complex environments in industrial scenarios in a productized way. And this requires robot products to undergo a lot of experiments and verifications, and continue to polish and accumulate know-how in many projects.
“So we chose to focus on making a product and make the pallet handling process deep enough. We have encountered enough problems here and accumulated enough customers, and we have established product barriers in the handling process. ” Zhang Xueyi said.
– Investor’s point of view:
Wang Shumin, managing partner of ELIX Capital, said: “We believe that intelligent robots will change many industries and greatly increase social efficiency, which is also the trend in the future. The Tasker team focuses on the world’s most common logistics handling unit – pallet handling, with innovative Combined with the advantages and characteristics of traditional forklifts and latent robots, it provides intelligent and unmanned handling and picking solutions for logistics and industrial customers. As an industry first, it has achieved widely recognized results among industry customers.”
Yang Yin, Vice President of ELIX Capital Investment, said: “We have always believed that good standardized products can cross industries and cycles and deliver value through a wider range of channels. Tasker’s pioneering unmanned forklift products are universal pallets in multiple industries. In the transportation scenario, more dexterous handling, more accurate navigation, and no additional auxiliary facilities are required, creating long-term value for customers’ more convenient and diverse handling and picking needs.”
Wu Yunlong, the founding managing partner of Zero One Ventures, said: “Pallet handling has always been the best way to solve the handling, storage and sorting in on-site logistics scenarios. Smart pallet robots can effectively help customers reduce costs and improve efficiency, which is the future of warehouses. An important part of infrastructure construction. The Tasker team has a group of high-end talents who understand technology, scenarios, and customers. Zero One Ventures invested in the team in the angel round, which is a typical case of our technology-driven supply chain upgrade. We believe The Tasker team will be recognized by more customers in the future and become a leader in pallet robots.”
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36Kr Sohu Investment China Sohu
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