Tencent Robotics X core team starts a business to lay out dexterous hands. "Yuansheng Intelligence" completes tens of millions of yuan in angel round financing | 36Kr exclusive.

Written by Wang Fangyu

Edited by Su Jianxun

Intelligent Emergence has learned that Yuansheng Intelligent Robot (Shenzhen) Co., Ltd. (hereinafter referred to as "Yuansheng Intelligent"), a startup focused on the research and development of dexterous robot hands, has announced the completion of a tens of millions of yuan angel round of financing. This round of financing is led by Shenzhen Capital Group Co., Ltd., with Kunzhong Capital and CAS STAR following the investment, and Langchao Capital serving as the exclusive financial advisor for this round of financing.

The financing will be mainly used to accelerate the research and development of core products, including the development and optimization of a new generation of dexterous robot hands and high-performance tactile sensor systems.

Yuansheng Intelligent was established in December 2024. Its founder, Yang Sicheng, graduated from Tsinghua University and has worked at Huawei and Tencent successively. He is one of the earliest core members to join Tencent Robotics X Laboratory, with rich technical research and development and large-scale mass production experience, and has applied for more than 60 invention patents. During his time at Tencent Robotics X Laboratory, Yang Sicheng served as the overall project leader of the dexterous hand project, leading the overall scheme design and the realization of key technologies.

The co-founder, Dr. Li Wangwei, graduated from the National University of Singapore and has more than ten years of research and development experience in tactile sensors. He is the former overall person in charge of the tactile perception system at Tencent Robotics X Laboratory and has published more than 30 papers in top journals and conferences such as Science Robotics.

The "hand" of a humanoid robot is a key part for its interaction with humans and the completion of complex tasks. It endows the robot with the ability to operate, grasp, and perceive objects, and is the key for the robot to achieve complex tasks.

However, the research and development of dexterous hands is extremely difficult, mainly reflected in its complex technical requirements and precise manufacturing processes.

The human hand has 22 degrees of freedom of movement, but its weight is only about 1/150 of the human body weight, and its motor function accounts for 54% of the whole body's motor function. In the dexterous hand system of the robot, the realization of these functions requires the mutual cooperation of multiple key parts such as the drive system, transmission system, sensor system, and control system.

But currently, the technical level of the industry is still difficult to achieve the flexibility and fine operation ability comparable to the human hand. The consensus of many insiders is that the two bottlenecks of humanoid robots are one is the hand, and the other is the brain.

Yang Sicheng said that a useful dexterous hand product needs to conform to the first principle and achieve a balance in the four aspects of dexterity, practicality, reliability, and cost.

Yuansheng Intelligent has conducted in-depth research on the driving mechanism of the human hand, and its technical solution can achieve motion ability close to that of the human hand, high-density and high-sensitivity tactile perception ability, and has good practicality and reliability. At the same time, the manufacturing process is positively designed for large-scale mass production, so the cost is also highly competitive.

According to Yang Sicheng, the company's dexterous hand product can have more than 20 degrees of freedom, and at the same time, the active load capacity can reach 30 kilograms, which is the largest load capacity among the high-degree-of-freedom (20+) dexterous hands that have been released globally.

With the continuous development of artificial intelligence and robot technology, humanoid robots have shown great application potential in more and more fields. As a key component of humanoid robots, the improvement of the performance of dexterous hands will directly determine the operating ability and application scope of humanoid robots.

"General embodied intelligence is an extremely complex system engineering. From mobility to operational ability, from hardware to algorithms, every link requires a lot of professional accumulation." Yang Sicheng said that Yuansheng Intelligent will focus on its own advantageous fields and promote robots to move towards general embodied intelligence with a more open attitude.

In the short term, Yuansheng Intelligent is committed to providing the industry with an excellent performance, reliable and stable dexterous operation hardware development platform; in the medium and long term, it will go deep into specific vertical scenarios to solve practical problems in production and life.

Views of Investment Institutions:

Yao Haibo, the founding partner of Kunzhong Capital, said: The founding team of Yuansheng Intelligent is a rare team in the market that combines a solid academic background and rich industry experience, and has been deeply engaged in the two core technologies of dexterous hand motion ability and tactile ability for more than ten years. Currently, China's robot industry is in a period of rapid development, and various innovative enterprises are constantly emerging. With the deep accumulation of the core team and the forward-looking technical layout, Yuansheng Intelligent is expected to occupy an important position in the global robot dexterous hand track.

The representative of CAS STAR said: The high-dynamic dexterous hand is a difficulty for the current general-purpose robot, with a high cost proportion and great development difficulty. The core team of Yuansheng Intelligent has been deeply engaged in the field of dexterous hands for many years. It is an extremely rare senior team with full-stack capabilities in machinery, tactile, and embodied algorithms, with a complete independent research and development ability. Its past dexterous hand projects have been running stably for a long time and the effect is amazing. We expect it to continuously improve the dexterous hand solution, closely cooperate and iterate with downstream robot manufacturers and application scenarios, become the leader in the dexterous hand industry, and accelerate the arrival of the "ChatGPT moment" of general-purpose robots.