36氪_让一部分人先看到未来

Next year, it will enter the period of large-scale supply.

Written by Tian Zhe

Edited by Su Jianxun

36Kr has learned that Zhuling Technology recently announced the completion of a Pre-A round of financing of tens of millions of US dollars, led by Shunwei Capital, with the follow-on investors being the old shareholders BlueRun Ventures and Beijing Hanjian Group. The funds from this round of financing will be mainly used to expand the team, enrich the product line, build a manufacturing system and a sales channel system.

Nanjing Zhuling Technology was established in 2022, focusing on the research and development and application of construction robots. It focuses on two major businesses: the whole machine products of construction robots and the core components and technical platform of construction robots. Its CEO, Dai Angang, is a well-known expert in the robot industry and an important promoter of the development of construction robots in China. He once served as the vice president of Bozhilin Robotics and the overall person in charge of the construction robot direction; he also served as the deputy general manager and chief engineer of a leading domestic robot enterprise for a long time. Currently, the team size of Zhuling Technology is about 40 people, with the R & D accounting for more than 60%.

Dai Angang told 36Kr that the output value of China's construction industry exceeds 31 trillion yuan, with a compound growth rate of about 7% in the past five years, and the market demand is still huge. However, in the past five years, due to the dangerous factors such as falling from heights, construction dust, high noise, and harmful chemical substances in the working environment, about 1.5 million construction workers have been lost on average every year. The automation level of the construction industry has lagged far behind the industrial automation level. The goal of Zhuling Technology is to achieve a "dark-lit construction site", apply robots to traditional construction, deeply integrate deep learning and multi-modal with robots to achieve machine intelligence, and create a general platform product for indoor decoration intelligent robots.

In 2022, the Ministry of Housing and Urban-Rural Development released the "14th Five-Year Plan for the Development of the Construction Industry". The plan pointed out that it is required to strengthen the research on core technologies of construction robots such as new sensing, intelligent control and optimization, multi-machine collaboration, and human-machine collaboration, study and formulate key technical standards, and form a number of landmark products of construction robots. Actively promote the typical application of construction robots in production, construction, maintenance and other links.

Zhuling Technology is targeting the floor tile paving market. Dai Angang introduced that the annual consumption of floor tiles in China reaches more than 3 billion square meters, and the annual labor expenditure is close to 150 billion yuan, with a relatively high labor cost.

Floor tile paving not only consumes the physical strength of workers, but also requires them to be careful enough. Workers must stir cement and lay tiles every day, and also ensure that the tiles are tightly fitted to prevent the occurrence of hollow tiles and unevenness.

At present, most of the floor tile paving in China is done by husband-and-wife teams. The man is responsible for laying the floor tiles, and the woman is responsible for assisting. The daily working hours are about 10 hours, and the paving area is between 20 and 25 square meters.

In response to the problems of personnel shortage and the need to improve efficiency in the floor tile paving market, Zhuling Technology has developed a floor tile paving robot, which is a robot used for fully automatic paving of 800*800, 600*600, and 1200*600 size floor tiles in a ground space of more than 30㎡, integrating the laying of tile adhesive and floor tiles.

Zhuling Robot

It is reported that the floor tile paving robot adopts a variety of technologies such as laser-fusion visual navigation, omnidirectional mobile chassis, global level positioning system for floor tiles, visual measurement and positioning system for the edge seams of floor tiles, four-point distributed vibration system, and precise laying system for the binder, which can solve the problem of floor tile flatness caused by uneven ground and reduce the hollowing rate of floor tiles, improving the paving quality.

Dai Angang introduced that after the floor tile paving robot receives the house structure diagram in advance, the robot can enter the site and conduct automated learning according to the room environment and the surrounding environment, and then set the driving path for automated operation. If the customer has special needs, the parameters can be manually input to the robot. In the residential scene, the floor tile paving robot can pave 70-80 square meters in 8 hours of work; in the industrial and construction scene, this number can reach 100-120 square meters.

Currently, Zhuling Technology has established cooperative relationships with domestic first-tier construction enterprises such as China Construction Eighth Engineering Division, Shanghai Construction Engineering Group, Guangzhou Construction, Gold Mantis, and China Communications Construction Group, and the cumulative construction area of its robot products exceeds 500,000 square meters.

Zhuling Technology also plans to expand into the overseas market. Dai Angang introduced that it has initially entered the Hong Kong and Singapore markets. After market verification, it will expand to Europe and the Middle East. It is expected that the domestic and overseas markets will each account for 50% in the future. Currently, Zhuling Technology has established a branch in Hong Kong.

In addition to developing the whole machine products, Zhuling Technology is also expanding the business of core component products in the field of indoor ground treatment, including the electronic control system, sensors, operating system, controller, etc. Among them, the controller independently developed by Zhuling Technology can realize the functions of navigation, positioning, and movement of construction robots.

Dai Angang predicts that with the continuous accumulation of customers and the completion and delivery of projects, it will enter the mass supply period next year.

Investor Perspectives

Li Rui, Partner of Shunwei Capital, said: "The construction robot is still in the early stage of development, and its penetration rate in the global market is still very low. The future market potential is huge. The founding team has rich development and management experience in the field of construction robots. The company has the opportunity to develop into a multi-product series construction robot platform in the future, contributing to the global intelligent construction."

BlueRun Ventures said: Based on the traditional trillion-level construction industry, we believe that the intelligent construction robot track is a potential huge innovation direction. The Zhuling team has long-term experience accumulation and impressive innovation insights in both the innovation ability of the robot's underlying module layer and the product definition of the intelligent construction robot. The Zhuling team has always adhered to the product strategy of focusing on the hit products while continuously promoting the innovation of the underlying module. Their newly defined robot products have begun to be promoted and landed in the overseas market, and have received very positive feedback from local industrial partners in the early testing process.

We believe that with the improvement of the domestic macroeconomic environment and the rapid recovery of the real estate and construction industries, the domestic intelligent construction robot market will usher in a new wave of rapid development. We are very optimistic about the long-term development potential of construction robots in the global market.

Tian Guangliang, Secretary of the Party Committee and Chairman of Beijing Hanjian Group, said: Hanjian Group was founded in 1978. As a large enterprise group with the national special-class construction qualification, it has always taken it as its responsibility to promote the innovation and upgrading of the construction industry. The outstanding innovation of Zhuling Technology in the field of intelligent robots shows their deep accumulation in the technical platform and product commercialization. We believe that Zhuling Technology, by empowering the traditional construction mode with intelligent construction robots, will surely effectively address the industry pain points such as labor shortage and construction safety, bringing a qualitative leap to the construction industry. Hanjian Group looks forward to working with Zhuling Technology to jointly create a new pattern of intelligent construction and contribute to the digital transformation and efficient development of the industry.

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