When a "robot" begins to attempt to understand the real physical world.
Text | Intelligent Emergence
Surrounded at CES, Dreame Presents Its Submission for Floor-Cleaning Robots
It's CES time once again. At this year's technological extravaganza, AI remains the undeniable star. With the empowerment of AI, an increasing number of machines are assuming human-like postures.
This is Dreame's seventh year participating in CES, and it has brought the largest exhibition area in its history, expanding to 325 square meters, a 4.5-fold increase compared to 2024, making it the brand with the largest exhibition area in the intelligent cleaning field.
Entering the Dreame exhibition area, a sense of future technology strikes you. The C1 & C1 Station window-cleaning robot, Z1 Pro wireless pool-cleaning robot, PM10 air purifier, Airstyle Pro styler, and H15 Pro Heat floor-washing machine, etc., represent Dreame's advanced technology and cutting-edge strength.
Among the cleaning matrix family bucket products it brings, the display of a mechanical hand is particularly eye-catching. In the midst of the onlookers, the mechanical arm can pick up a paper ball, then rotate and throw it into the trash can.
This mechanical arm will also be launched along with Dreame's new products. The person in charge at the scene said that in addition to the bionic multi-joint mechanical hand technology, the new products will also be equipped with an intelligent mop-changing system, adopting a new base station structure that can accommodate up to 3 sets of mops and support the automatic changing of mops at the base station.
"In the past, our imagination of service robots was in a humanoid form, but Dreame's new products give people a new image imagination of service robots," an industry insider believes.
According to the sharing, Dreame's new products draw inspiration from the design concept of high-end convertible sports cars in terms of appearance design. The front face of the fuselage is both tough and round, with a high degree of recognition. The mechanical hand cabin will also be modeled after the roof design of a convertible sports car, elegantly opening when the mechanical hand is activated and folding and hiding when it is retracted to maintain aesthetics and a sense of technology.
In terms of the system, its software core system adopts an embodied intelligence large model system, which can drive the task scheduling ability of the floor-cleaning robot. At the same time, it also combines a dual-camera system and AI deep learning technology, enabling the robot to accurately identify objects and independently judge the processing sequence. It is the industry's first "intelligent butler" that can independently plan cleaning.
Since 2022, the explosion of the large model track has enabled machines to have the ability to understand the physical world. Dreame's this generation of products also initially has the feeling of service robots.
Especially in terms of logical planning, according to the sharing, in dealing with household cleaning situations, the X50 Ultra can have - classification logic: put slippers at the entrance / put toys in the toy room, etc.; sequence logic: deal with clean things first / deal with things closer to you first; more difficult tasks: in the face of densely piled things, pick them up one by one.
Its arm can achieve five degrees of freedom, which can be understood as the four core joints of a human being: "shoulder, elbow, wrist, and finger". This means that in a more complex cleaning environment, narrow areas can also be cleaned, which will be a huge breakthrough in the usage scenario.
This is not Dreame's first exploration of new technologies and new scenarios in the floor-cleaning robot industry. In 2023, Dreame first launched the Dreame X20 series with the world's first bionic mechanical arm, which has been recognized by the market. In September 2024, Dreame held an autumn new product launch with the theme of "Going to Where No One Has Gone Before", and it was at this launch that Dreame heavily launched the X50 series floor-cleaning robots and the mechanical arm floor-washing machine T40 Ultra.
In order to solve the problem of allowing the floor-washing machine to cross the thresholds and steps in the home, Dreame pioneered the dual mechanical feet, which can cross obstacles up to 42mm, enabling the floor-cleaning robot to enter the era of the whole house.
Just three months later, Dreame's surprise for the industry has been upgraded again. The mechanical arm of the X50 Ultra has taken a bolder step forward. It can be said that this will be a robot that can independently use cleaning tools. Dreame also innovatively equipped the robot with a new accessory compartment system. When encountering narrow areas such as under the bed and under the sofa, the robot can independently return to the accessory compartment to "change tools" to complete complex cleaning tasks and achieve precise cleaning in every corner. This design not only significantly improves the practicality of the floor-cleaning robot but also gives it a family service attribute, upgrading it from a simple cleaning tool to a multifunctional service robot.
Whether in terms of attitude or speed, Dreame has shown a commendable degree of innovation.
From Mechanical Arm to Mechanical Hand, The Final Battle of Floor-Cleaning Robots
Since the American iRobot first introduced the concept of floor-cleaning robots in 2002, until around 2016 when domestic floor-cleaning robot brands rose and swept the global market, there have been few new stories in the floor-cleaning robot industry in the past two years.
Entering the second half of 2024, the floor-cleaning robot market finally picked up and returned to high-speed growth. According to the "Global Smart Home Device Market Quarterly Tracking Report, Q3 2024" released by IDC, 5.014 million smart floor-cleaning robots were shipped globally in the third quarter, with a year-on-year growth of 11.1%. Among them, the domestic market was driven by the national subsidy for old-for-new exchanges that started at the end of September, with 1.321 million units shipped, a year-on-year growth of 17%. The latest estimated data shows that in 2024, the growth rate of the Chinese floor-cleaning robot market is expected to be close to 9%.
Among them, the low-price strategy has played many advantages, and with the support of the new round of national subsidy policies, the market growth of floor-cleaning robots is expected to last for a period of time.
However, from the essence of business, among the factors that consumers pay for products and brands, price only accounts for a small part, and the reason why the remaining consumers have not taken action is that the current floor-cleaning robots do not have a leap in experience that is sufficient to impress them. On this difficult but correct path, there is still a lack of investment in innovation.
Looking back at the innovation path of Dreame floor-cleaning robots, Dreame's bionic mechanical arm allows the floor-cleaning robot to break through the restraint of the circular fuselage, flexibly deal with corners, and extend to every corner of the home space for meticulous cleaning. And Dreame's bionic mechanical feet enable the floor-cleaning robot to have the ability to cross, and can easily deal with obstacles such as thresholds and slide rails, showing stronger autonomy and environmental adaptability.
Now the birth of Dreame's mechanical hand makes the floor-cleaning robot no longer limited to the cleaning function, but moving towards a real family service robot, presenting a highly feasible new solution for the future and landing form of embodied intelligence.
Behind it is of course the continuous breakthrough and the great pursuit of innovation. The mechanical hand solution released this time can even be traced back to April 2023. They have conceived three major versions successively, and each version is a complete reconstruction. From the crab-shaped form in the first version, to the second version with 3 degrees of freedom but sacrificing some functions of the floor-cleaning robot, to the current highly completed version, the new mechanical hand product does not lose any of the original functions of the floor-cleaning robot. While taking into account cleaning and organizing, it also adds narrow scenarios, achieving a true bionic effect.
According to Dreame's sharing, in this process, the team also encountered many obstacles, and the most troublesome one is precisely the motor.
Because the mechanical hand needs to be able to grip a weight of up to 400g, it means that the motor component (motor + gearbox) needs to achieve a torque of 6Nm. But at the same time, because the space of the floor-cleaning robot is limited, and to ensure an extremely thin and light body, under this contradiction, Dreame visited more than 50 suppliers, and none of them were able to supply a motor that meets the requirements. Dreame, which pursues the ultimate and has accumulated in motor manufacturing, had to decide to develop the motor by itself. Finally, the Dreame motor with a thickness of only 18mm was successfully made.
There is no doubt that this kind of innovation not only benefits consumers but also drives the development of the supply chain, giving more possibilities for the application of motors.
Dreame expressed at an internal motor technology exchange meeting that the original intention of Dreame to make motors is not only for itself, but to let the world enjoy the compound interest of technology. Especially when small and medium-sized enterprises do not have self-developed motors, the industry can progress through the motors output by Dreame, and ultimately drive the development of the industry.
From Quantity Change to Quality Change, Towards the Future of Embodied Intelligence
The explosion and iteration of the large language model technology have changed the global hardware ecosystem.
It not only means that some mature hardware products will redo the underlying system based on AI, but also means that the arrival of embodied intelligence and wearable devices in the more distant future has been advanced by one step.
At this year's CES exhibition site, AI glasses and AI companion robots swept the venue. There is no doubt that artificial intelligence has become an important variable in changing the hardware ecosystem.
The giants are also making efforts. In this year's CES opening speech, Nvidia's Jensen Huang reemphasized Nvidia's embodied intelligence strategy. He believes that the future of robots depends on creating an effective world model. Nvidia launched the NVIDIA Cosmos basic model to get involved, which also gives embodied intelligence more say in the future terminal competition.
However, the training difficulty of general-purpose robots is far beyond people's imagination. Just as Jensen Huang said, it is not only limited to language understanding, but also needs to integrate physical dynamics, such as gravity and friction. For this reason, Nvidia hopes to solve these generalization problems with the basic model capability.
This is not only the problem of Nvidia, but every enterprise is following this trend of the times in a way that suits itself.
Dreame is exploring the boundaries of floor-cleaning robots. With the support of the large model system, Dreame enables the floor-cleaning robot to have the ability to think, and also indicates that the floor-cleaning robot created by Dreame is going deeper and further in the combination with AI and embodied intelligence, further obtaining the ticket to the era of embodied intelligence.
In fact, people still have not reached a consensus on the representative of future robots.
Take humanoid robots as an example, the space for landing at this stage is still limited, and large-scale commercial landing still needs time. According to Dreame's vision, service robots can have various forms.
Dreame itself has a deep accumulation in the robot field, which enables it to choose a more suitable route for its own development in the transformation and exploration of service robots. And the exploration and accumulation of products such as mechanical arms and mechanical feet will enable Dreame's floor-cleaning robots to achieve a leap from quantity change to quality change.
As the "human touch" of floor-cleaning robots becomes stronger, the prototype of future family service robots is constantly gestating and developing, and is about to emerge. Perhaps this is also an important reason for the breakthrough of multi-joint mechanical hand floor-cleaning robots. In the embodied intelligence track, Dreame's imagination space is considerable.
But why is it Dreame? Or what is Dreame's unique feature?
First of all, as an enterprise rooted in the floor-cleaning robot track for many years, it not only has a sufficient supply chain foundation and its own factory with the top execution ability in the floor-cleaning machine industry. More importantly, it meets the needs of users. By creating a mechanical hand, Dreame can not only do a good job of cleaning, but also effectively do a good job of organizing. In the future, with the iteration of the software, the item recognition combined with the grasping, organizing and classified cleaning functions will only be more perfect.
Dreame also has a strong reserve in R & D capabilities and talent composition: It is revealed that Dreame's product R & D and design personnel account for about 60%, and the annual R & D investment accounts for 7% of the revenue. Nearly one-third of the R & D personnel are doctors. This also enables it to have the strength to deal with long-term development projects. In the nearly two-year R & D cycle, it has gone through three stages to achieve technological advancement from the "crab hand" to the "powerful arm" and then to the "multi-joint mechanical hand".
The currently released version has relatively complete core functions. Dreame can complete multiple tasks such as picking up items on the ground + autonomously changing accessories in the accessory compartment + cleaning gaps. Currently, other brands in the industry can only pick up, and the weight of the picked items is only half of Dreame's.
It can be said that in terms of leading technical parameters, Dreame's mechanical hand gripping force, grasping weight, and arm span length are much higher than other brands.
Finally, it is its craftsmanship concept. In order not to sacrifice performance, Dreame independently developed the first 18mm ultra-thin motor on the market. And in order to better grasp items and cleaning tools, Dreame added an additional structured light module to the gripper part to improve accuracy and success rate, and the sports car-like cabin cover also added 3 motors. All of these give Dreame's new products a more extreme experience.
This extremity also lies in that in the overall structure of the machine, the basic parameters and size of Dreame's floor-cleaning machine are the same as the X50 Pro, compatible with the bionic dual mechanical arms, mechanical feet and dual roller brush structure, and the function of the floor-cleaning machine itself, the product structure space and form have not changed.
All these make Dreame expected to further subvert the floor-cleaning robot industry.
According to Dreame's sharing, since its establishment on the first day in 2017, Dreame has been based on globalization and maintains a leading position in domestic and overseas markets.
At present, Dreame has implemented a global product development strategy, completed the layout of the global supply chain system and the construction of the global channel system. Through the construction of a talent organization structure that can match globalization, it strives to build the world's largest technology ecosystem. At present, it has covered 100 countries and regions around the world, including China, the United States, Germany, France, South Korea, etc. The number of global offline physical stores has exceeded 5,500, serving more than 21 million families.