Like a catfish entering the pond, Dreame ventures into the core area of embodied intelligence.
For moms with one- or two-year-old babies, life is like a rollercoaster ride, with one half being sweet and the other half filled with anxiety and exhaustion.
From the early morning, before they even have time to enjoy a cup of coffee, the living room has already been taken over by the baby's toys. Toys of various shapes and materials are scattered everywhere. Small building blocks are here and there, plush dolls are lying haphazardly, and tangrams, models, plastic balls, etc. are randomly distributed in the corners under the tables.
Fearing that the baby might accidentally swallow something or trip over the toys, moms have no choice but to put down their breakfast and start tidying up. They sort the big toys, put the small building block parts into storage boxes, and clean up the snack crumbs that have accidentally fallen on the floor. But before they can finish tidying up, they see the baby pushing a small car and knocking down the just-organized jigsaw puzzle with a bang. A new round of the toy war and the endless tidying work begin again.
It's not until the baby is exhausted and falls asleep that moms still have to face the messy living room and muster up the energy to continue tidying up. On one hand, they hope that the baby will soon become obedient and stop making the house a mess. On the other hand, they also look forward to having a "capable assistant" to share this hard work with them.
Now, this need can be met by the sweeping robot equipped with a bionic multi-joint manipulator.
Just last week, the annual China Household Appliances and Consumer Electronics Expo arrived as scheduled. In this carnival of emerging consumer electronic products in China, one could smell the gunpowder among the brands.
Interestingly, the traditional white goods, which used to occupy most of the exhibition hall space, quietly took a back seat this year, and the venue became the home court for smart home appliance brands. In the smart cleaning appliance exhibition area, brands such as Dreame, Roborock, and Yunjing all launched embodied intelligent new products and set up special display areas. Among them, the sweeping robot with an "arm" attracted many visitors to stop and watch as the most popular item.
For example, the new sweeping robot exhibited at the Dreame booth has the same appearance as a regular sweeping machine. The top is designed like a convertible sports car with an openable canopy, and it is equipped with a bionic multi-joint manipulator inside. When the sweeping robot identifies scattered toys, clothes, or paper ball garbage in front of it during operation, the manipulator will automatically extend to pick up the items on the ground and organize them into the storage area.
It can be said that the emergence of the manipulator has for the first time shifted the product function iteration direction of sweeping robots from stable basic floor cleaning to the stage of flexible and changeable space environment cleaning. Sweeping robots represented by Dreame have taken the lead in entering the 3.0 era of service robots with a "perception - decision - action" closed - loop.
With the help of embodied intelligent technology, sweeping robots can achieve a qualitative leap in perception, decision - making, and action, so as to understand user needs more accurately and provide more efficient, intelligent, and personalized cleaning services, meeting users' multi - dimensional expectations for cleaning quality and operational convenience. This is an effective verification of the application of embodied intelligent technology in hardware products and the market.
Since last year, influenced by factors such as national subsidy policies, the household appliance market has shown a long - awaited double - growth trend in sales volume and revenue. The retail scale in the first three quarters exceeded the peak in 2019. However, it cannot be denied that as technology products such as sweeping robots gradually mature, there is still a gap in users' mental perception and rigid demand compared with the penetration rate of traditional refrigerators, washing machines, and air conditioners.
As the category dividend fades, if traditional white goods manufacturers want to continue their growth trajectory, they must look to a more distant future. The core of the competition in the third stage will revolve around the first - principle proposition: that is, how to continuously improve product strength through technological innovation, accurately solve users' pain points in diverse scenarios, and thus continuously promote the improvement of market penetration. This will be the key for enterprises to stand out in the fierce competition.
The Story Starting from "Liberating Hands"
Undoubtedly, users' demand for replacing cleaning work with intelligent mechanical means has always existed and is very stable. This is a long - term and continuous rigid demand.
Taking the scenario application ability of sweeping robots as the dividing line, its early technological development path can be divided into two stages.
In the first stage, which was the tool era, sweeping robots appeared as pure mechanical "coolies" in the form of tools with single functions such as sweeping the floor and cleaning windows. Their design purpose was clear and single, and they could help complete some basic cleaning tasks.
However, limited by the technological level at that time, these robots lacked the ability of autonomous decision - making and action. They could only run according to pre - set simple programs. For example, in 2002, iRobot released the first commercial sweeping machine, Roomba, which adopted a collision - type cleaning mode. It could not flexibly adjust according to the actual home environment. When encountering obstacles, it would repeatedly collide and even get stuck, requiring manual intervention to continue working, and the cleaning effect was far from satisfactory.
In the second stage, the SLAM (Simultaneous Localization and Mapping) technology equipped with lidar emerged. Sweeping robots could obtain position and speed information through inertial sensors such as gyroscopes and accelerometers, thus achieving a certain degree of path planning. They could sense the surrounding environment, automatically avoid obstacles to reduce collisions and getting stuck, and the degree of intelligence was significantly improved.
However, the sweeping robots in the 2.0 era still had certain limitations. They were relatively passive in task execution and mainly worked according to pre - set rules and instructions. They had limited ability to handle complex and changeable cleaning scenarios and personalized cleaning needs. For example, when encountering some special stains or different floor materials that required different cleaning intensities, they could not actively make judgments and adjustments, making it difficult to meet users' increasingly diverse cleaning requirements.
At that time, there were many start - up companies that benefited from the category dividend. With the support of capital, they expanded rapidly and achieved rapid growth in the short term. But when looking at the other side of the scale, users were hesitant about product homogenization and price - cutting competition among manufacturers. As a result, there were voices in the market such as "the intelligent cleaning market is cold, and start - up companies are struggling to survive" and "the product return rate is high, and products cannot be delivered on time".
According to the Zhongyikang report, in the first half of 2023, the market scale of sweeping robots in China was 6.36 billion yuan, a year - on - year decrease of 0.6%. In 2022, the market scale increased by 9%, which means that the industry's development has approached the ceiling.
The turning point came in 2024. The market accelerated the reshuffle, the low - end line of sweeping robots was gradually eliminated, and products and services transitioned to the mid - to - high - end. The demand of the young user group also showed a trend of being more practical, intelligent, and personalized, and they were not satisfied with only basic cleaning functions.
Practicality is an important consideration for young people when choosing a sweeping robot, that is, it should be able to handle complex home environments and effectively solve various cleaning problems. For example, the common problem of hair entanglement, whether it is necessary to manually clean the roller brush frequently, how to adjust the suction and operation mode for cleaning different floor materials, and whether the capacity of the dust box and water tank is large enough to reduce the trouble of frequent emptying and refilling.
Intelligence is reflected in a more personalized interactive experience. The sweeping robot can act as an intelligent assistant in people's lives and seamlessly integrate with daily life. This includes reasonably planning the cleaning route to avoid repeated cleaning and omissions and improve cleaning efficiency; adding remote control functions, so that users can remotely start the sweeping robot through the mobile APP on the way to work or when going out, and control the sweeping robot to start working, pause, or return to charging with simple instructions. It has also been integrated into the smart home ecosystem and can cooperate with other home devices, making it more convenient to use.
Users need a smarter sweeping robot. These upgraded demands are driving the rapid iteration of technology and products. This is also an inevitable trend. Against the background of the development and integration of embodied intelligent technology, sweeping robots can achieve a qualitative leap in perception, decision - making, and action. They urgently need to enter the 3.0 era from the previous 1.0 and 2.0 eras to more accurately understand user needs and truly liberate hands.
The "3.0 Form" of Sweeping Robots
There has been a lot of intense discussion in the industry about whether sweeping robots need "hands".
Its advantages are obvious. It greatly expands the functional boundaries of sweeping robots, enabling them to handle more complex stains and cleaning tasks. In terms of application scenarios, it is no longer limited to flat floor cleaning but extends the service scope to three - dimensional space, achieving full - coverage of household service scenarios.
Imagine that in daily home life, it can not only sweep the floor but also use the flexible operation of the manipulator joints to clean narrow areas such as the bottom of furniture and corners. For families with children, it is like a considerate assistant, helping to pick up toys scattered everywhere and organize the messy room in an orderly manner.
However, the solution with an added manipulator has extremely high requirements for the algorithm ability of visual recognition, and it is also very difficult to integrate on the hardware side. It is necessary to ensure the robustness of operation and customize a variety of high - precision and high - performance components to work together, which increases the R & D and manufacturing costs. All manufacturers need to take on considerable risks. This also puts forward extremely high requirements for enterprises in terms of function selection and user insight judgment during product innovation.
Earlier, there were several major discussions within Dreame about whether to add a manipulator to the sweeping robot and what kind of manipulator to add. The first version of the manipulator proposed by the R & D team was in the form of a purely remote - controlled crab. It had only one upward degree of freedom, supported the planar movement of the mechanical arm, and the extended arm length was about 5 centimeters. This design lacked the ability of three - dimensional clamping, and its clamping height and weight - bearing capacity were very limited, so it was quickly eliminated internally.
Considering the different tasks in the home scenario and the need to handle a large number of objects of different weights and shapes, in the design of the second - version manipulator, the Dreame team increased the degrees of freedom of the hand to 3, and the extended length was increased to about 15 centimeters, which could support the picking and placing of objects within 100 grams. However, this design led to a relatively large motor volume, which in turn squeezed some of the original functional space of the sweeping machine, such as the dust box, the small water tank on the machine body, and the roller brush area, sacrificing some cleaning and auxiliary functions. This was contrary to Dreame's concept of pursuing overall function optimization, so this version of the plan also failed to pass.
It wasn't until the third - version plan emerged that there was finally a breakthrough in the R & D direction of the new product. First of all, in terms of structure, the manipulator of the sweeping robot has 5 degrees of freedom. Analogous to the human body structure, it can correspond to the four core joints of "shoulder, elbow, wrist, and finger", with high flexibility. Its extension distance can reach 30 centimeters, about half the length of an adult's arm. It can clamp items about 6 centimeters wide, equivalent to the width of an aluminum can, and has a maximum load - bearing capacity of 400 grams, which can meet the clamping needs of a variety of items in daily family life.
For the common narrow gaps formed by furniture placement in the home, such as the areas between sofas, cabinets, toilets, and walls, which are difficult for regular sweeping machines to clean, Dreame has specially equipped the bionic multi - joint manipulator with a separate accessory warehouse. When the sweeping robot encounters a narrower scenario than its body, the manipulator can automatically go to the accessory warehouse to pick up and install the appropriate cleaning tool according to the scenario and the degree of dirt, and then, like a person holding a cleaning tool, return to the narrow area for detailed cleaning, truly achieving no dead - corners in cleaning and providing users with a more efficient and comprehensive cleaning experience.
In terms of intelligent algorithms, Dreame's bionic multi - joint manipulator is equipped with a self - developed embodied intelligent large model, which consists of a perception model and a decision - making model. Based on visual algorithms and AI large models, it perceives the surrounding environment, and then relies on the decision - making ability of the language model to express the features of skills and state space through the network and directly output the skill sequence.
This embodied intelligent large model takes the lead in creating a "perception - decision - action" closed - loop, which can greatly improve the generalization ability of Dreame's sweeping robot. It has the real - time ability of "physical interaction + spatial intelligence", enabling it to handle complex and changeable home environments. It can flexibly plan the cleaning path and adjust the cleaning strategy according to the space layout and actual situation. For example, when an obstacle suddenly appears or the position of furniture changes, it can quickly adapt and make the correct response, always maintaining an efficient operating state.
It can be seen that based on in - depth user insight, Dreame's bionic multi - joint manipulator for sweeping robots is a more innovative product that can truly meet consumers' needs and is expected to promote the improvement of its market penetration and popularity.
Adhering to the Methodology of Technological Innovation
Returning to the daily cleaning work in modern families, there are pain points such as tight time, heavy tasks, high difficulty, and high standards.
People have a fast - paced work life and are too busy to have enough time and energy for a thorough general cleaning of the house. In addition, cleaning work is cumbersome and repetitive, which easily makes people feel bored and tired. Some corners and hard - to - reach places such as the bottom of furniture and corners are difficult to clean manually. Household service robots represented by sweeping machines have greatly reduced people's housework burden with the convenience and high efficiency of their cleaning functions and are favored by the new generation of young users.
According to forecasts by international data companies such as IDC, the global market scale of sweeping robots is expected to reach 11.2 billion US dollars in 2024. By 2027, the market scale of sweeping robots in China may climb to 75.62 billion yuan.
It has to be admitted that there has been a serious problem of product homogenization in the market before. The products of many brands are similar in terms of functions and design, lacking innovation and differentiated competitive advantages. This makes it difficult for users to choose products and also limits the further development of the entire industry.
The key to further improving the market penetration of cleaning appliances lies in returning to the core value of products and taking technological innovation as the fundamental driving force. By continuously investing in R & D and launching high - performance and cost - effective products, it can precisely meet the current users' differentiated needs in diverse scenarios. This is also the development path that Dreame has always followed.
As an innovative technology company with a geeky gene, currently, in terms of Dreame's personnel structure, product R & D and design personnel account for 60%, and the R & D expenses account for more than 7% of the sales volume. The R & D investment far exceeds the industry average level.
Dreame adheres to the principle of "mass - producing one generation, researching and developing one generation, and reserving one generation" in technological R & D and reserve. That is, when making R & D investments, one - third is used for product iteration in existing fields, one - third is used for product innovation in existing fields, and one - third is used for innovation in new fields to maintain a steady growth and leading edge in the three dimensions of R & D