Flexible tactile sensing company receives exclusive investment from Xiaomi, has secured orders from leading automakers and robot enterprises | Exclusive report by Yingke

Author | Huang Nan

Editor | Yuan Silai

36Kr learned that Shanghai Zhishi Intelligent Technology Co., Ltd. (hereinafter referred to as "Yaole Technology") has completed tens of millions of yuan in financing. This round was exclusively invested by Xiaomi, and Yundao Capital served as the exclusive financial advisor. The funds will be used to increase R & D investment in the field of embodied intelligence, accelerate the mass - production rhythm, and meet the demand for service expansion.

Since its establishment, "Yaole Technology" has long been focused on the R & D of flexible pressure technology. With flexible fabric tactile sensors as its core product, it is committed to providing customized solutions for multiple industries such as automotive, furniture, medical, and sports.

The introduction cycle of vehicle - grade products is usually more than three years, and they need to undergo hundreds of tests such as extreme temperature, vibration, and electromagnetic interference.

As early as 2019, "Yaole Technology" had passed the vehicle - grade test of a leading luxury car manufacturer and became the core supplier of its intelligent cockpit pressure sensing solution. With its technological accumulation and mass - production capabilities, the company has taken the lead in breaking the monopoly of international giants, becoming the designated testing partner of many leading car manufacturers. It has also won the designated mass - production order for a model with monthly sales of tens of thousands of units from a leading domestic automaker and serves high - end brands such as Porsche and Maserati in depth.

Founder and CEO Lv Liyun has many years of R & D and industrialization experience in the fields of intelligent driving sensors and robot perception. She once served as the chief architecture engineer of the international automotive electronics giant Harman, leading the construction of a multi - modal sensor fusion computing platform. Many core members are from top institutions such as the Chinese Academy of Sciences and the University of Michigan, and they have the cross - field technology integration ability in materials, hardware, algorithms, and cloud.

"Entering the automotive track is essentially to refine technology with the highest standards and then be compatible with other scenarios. " Lv Liyun told 36Kr. "Currently, many companies are trying to enter the market through emerging fields such as robotics, where the supplier and standard systems are not yet perfect. However, the verification system and supply - chain threshold of the automotive industry chain can truly define a company's product strength."

Currently, the company not only has a first - mover advantage among mainstream domestic car - maker customers but also further penetrates and implements in scenarios such as smart home and robotics based on the "reuse of vehicle - grade technology" strategy.

According to a report by Grand View Research, the global smart sensor market reached $51.42 billion in 2023 and is expected to continue to expand at a compound annual growth rate of 19.0% from 2024 to 2030. Among them, as a highly potential niche area, flexible sensors show good flexibility, conformability, and wearability, etc., which enables them to be widely used in scenarios such as smart home, automobile manufacturing, medical health, and consumer electronics, and the market demand is showing an explosive growth.

"Yaole Technology" uses fabric as the technological entry point. On the one hand, fabric materials are naturally more comfortable. Their delicate feel and diverse appearance forms can naturally fit the human body and flexibly adapt to various scenario requirements. At the same time, the integration of conductive materials, smart hardware, and traditional fabrics enables it to accurately sense environmental changes and human body signals, making the sensors more functional, connectable, and intelligent to achieve efficient data transmission and intelligent processing.

Through innovative material combinations and structural designs, "Yaole Technology" independently developed a "metal yarn + sandwich matrix" flexible fabric sensor. It weaves high - strength metal yarns into a conductive network and embeds them in a "sandwich" three - dimensional matrix structure composed of multiple layers of fabric. It has the characteristics of high sensitivity, high flexibility, and washability, and can realize real - time monitoring of large - area pressure distribution on soft surfaces.

Among them, the conductive performance of the metal yarn can provide the sensor with the ability to accurately capture physical signals such as pressure, displacement, and deformation, while the sandwich matrix structure realizes multi - dimensional signal collection and anti - interference filtering through the composite superposition of multiple layers of fabric. This design not only enables the sensor to seamlessly fit complex surfaces such as curved and wrinkled ones and withstand daily use scenarios such as stretching and washing but also breaks through the limitations of traditional rigid sensors in terms of shape, flexibility, comfort, and environmental adaptability.

Comparison chart of the fibers used by Yaole Technology and other materials (Source: the company)

Take the smart mattress scenario as an example. Lv Liyun told 36Kr that "Yaole Technology" currently provides a relatively standardized smart solution that can cover 80% - 90% of the mainstream functions such as intelligent zoned support, snoring intervention, and health monitoring. Customers do not need to change the original mattress production process. They only need to embed the sensor and controller into the mattress according to the structural design, which can greatly reduce the R & D threshold and transformation cost of smart mattresses and quickly launch intelligent products with minimal investment.

During use, the sensor can collect real - time data such as human body pressure and sleeping posture. The controller, as the "brain of the mattress", runs customized algorithms based on the sensor data to precisely control the execution components. For example, it can automatically adjust the inflation and deflation of the airbag according to the user's body shape or drive the mattress to adjust the angle up and down through a motor. At the same time, the system supports single - user independent control and double - user collaborative mode. When used by a single user, a single set of control system is connected, and in the double - user scenario, the two sets of systems are linked to meet the sleep preferences of different users.

In the field of embodied intelligence, which has been gaining increasing popularity, "Yaole Technology"'s flexible fabric sensors have also been introduced into the dexterous hand solution. As the "tactile nerve" of the robot, the hand sensor has a higher technical complexity and performance threshold. According to Lv Liyun, to achieve fine grasping such as picking up millimeter - level parts or soft objects, generally 800 - 1000 sensing points need to be integrated in the palm or a single finger area to capture subtle changes in pressure distribution.

"Yaole Technology" embeds sensors in key parts of the robot such as fingers, wrist joints, and the spine, which can capture real - time changes in force, posture deviation, and terrain feature recognition, and complete millimeter - level force control and centimeter - level path planning. This "human - like tactile" perception ability helps the robot to accurately adapt to environmental changes in scenarios such as household cleaning and industrial assembly, improving the dexterous operation ability of the dexterous hand and reducing collision damage to the whole machine.

Application demonstration diagram of Yaole Technology's sensors in the robot field (Source: the company)

36Kr learned that currently, "Yaole Technology" has won stable mass - production orders in the automotive, two - wheeled vehicle, and smart home fields, and has reached cooperation with leading robot companies and consumer wearable device manufacturers to ensure both a stable cash flow and reserves of cutting - edge orders.

Views of the investor:

Cao Jishan, the founding partner of Yundao Capital said that Yundao Capital highly values the breakthrough achievements and strategic prospects of Yaole Technology in the field of flexible tactile perception. The exclusive investment from a leading industrial player not only strongly recognizes the company's technological barriers and commercialization capabilities but also confirms its scarce value as "the domestic tactile sensor supplier that has passed vehicle - grade tests".

The Yaole Technology team, with its profound vehicle - grade R & D accumulation, took the lead in breaking through the strict certification system of luxury car manufacturers. Its independently developed "metal yarn + sandwich matrix" flexible sensor has achieved an internationally leading level in terms of sensitivity, flexibility, and environmental adaptability. This development path of "compatible with other industries from the automotive industry" gives it a significant dimensionality - reduction advantage in emerging fields. It has successfully entered the supply - chain systems of leading customers and formed an order matrix across multiple industries. We particularly value its strategic depth in the "reuse of vehicle - grade technology". The company efficiently migrates the core technologies verified by the trillion - level automotive industry chain to the incremental markets worth hundreds of billions of yuan in embodied intelligence, health care, etc. This ability not only significantly reduces the intelligent transformation cost of customers but also builds an uncopyable moat for cross - industry solutions.