Former DJI engineers start a business, and an angel investor from Unitree steps in. A bionic flexible robot company completes a new round of financing | Hardcore Kr Exclusive

Author | Huang Nan

Editor | Yuan Silai

Yingke learned that Shenzhen Qingyu Technology Co., Ltd. (hereinafter referred to as "Qingyu Technology") recently completed an angel round of financing of tens of millions of yuan. The lead investor in this round is Dexun Investment. As the angel investor of Unitree Technology, this is also another project it has invested in the hardware field after Jike Technology, Shouxing Technology, and Ruochuang Technology. The old shareholder Miracle Plus continued to increase its investment in this round. The financing funds will be used for technology R & D investment, product iteration, and multi - scenario commercialization exploration.

Qingyu Technology was established in March 2025 and focuses on the R & D of bionic flexible robots. It uses adaptive flexible drive technology, which can achieve flexibility and safety close to that of human arms and solve the problem of rigid limitations of traditional robots. The founder and CEO, Peng Rui, is a doctor in robotics from the University of Hong Kong, won the Hong Kong government's Young Scientist Award from the 25th to 26th, and once served as an embedded engineer at DJI. He has nearly a decade of experience in robot engineering R & D and academia.

After the "Robot War" at the 2026 Spring Festival Gala, the upsurge of embodied intelligence has continued to heat up. People have a more concrete picture of humanoid robots entering families.

However, when it tries to be applied to actual scenarios, many fundamental problems remain unsolved: If a robot works closely with humans, is it safe? Is it light enough? Steel joints can complete millisecond - level responsive movements, but if an accidental injury occurs during human - robot interaction, who should be responsible?

Lightweight and safety are the bottom lines for robots to enter families, which is a common consensus in the industry. Peng Rui, the CEO of Qingyu Technology, told Yingke that although current mainstream rigid robots perform well in terms of accuracy and stability, their physical nature determines that it is difficult for them to coexist with humans without being noticed. Only by using flexible intelligence to transform uncertain environmental interactions into a definite and safe experience and constructing a closed - loop "brain - body - environment" execution system can understanding be translated into controllable actions in the family scenario.

Qingyu Technology has chosen a different path: bionic flexible robots with flexible drives as the core, which simulate biological tendons, that is, the linkage and force - exerting logic of human muscles and tendons, making the robot's "body" soft, light, and malleable while retaining strong load efficiency and accurate control.

In Qingyu Technology's office of dozens of square meters, dozens of prototype machines that the team has mass - produced have occupied most of the space. The motion structure of the product can bend and wrap freely and flexibly, and output adaptive force feedback during the contact process. Behind all this is the support of their self - developed drives and customized "tendon" systems.

Conceptual diagram of Qingyu Technology's bionic robot product (Source/Enterprise)

Traditional robots mostly use a rigid structure of motors and connecting rods, and each joint has its own drive, which easily leads to weight concentration at the joints, making them heavier and heavier. In contrast, the flexible drive solution adopted by Qingyu Technology integrates the drive at the far end and transmits the force to the moving joints through "tendons", which greatly reduces the structural weight and inertia and can achieve an extremely high load - to - self - weight ratio.

Test data shows that the ultimate load - to - self - weight ratio of a single flexible robot product reaches 5:1, a single joint can bear a maximum load of 35 kilograms, and the bending life exceeds 10 million times.

This driving method brings not only lightweight. Since the flexible joints themselves have no rigid limitations, the robot can achieve omnidirectional movement with 8 degrees of freedom in space, and any position on the body can become an operating point. "Rigid robots can only rely on the end to perform tasks, while our robots can not only perform point - to - point operations at the end, but also wrap and curl irregular objects with the body." Peng Rui told Yingke that this ability gives its products a natural adaptive advantage in complex scenarios.

At the same time, the compliant structure also ensures the safety of human - robot interaction at the physical level. Even if an accidental collision occurs with a human, the flexible joints can absorb the impact, deform adaptively, and avoid strong impact injuries like rigid joints.

At the algorithm level, Qingyu Technology deeply couples its self - developed non - linear motion control algorithm, distributed sensors, and simulation platform with the hardware to build a complete flexible "body + cerebellum" system.

Each joint is covered with sensors, which can collect highly non - linear motion data in real - time and synthesize large - scale training data on the simulation platform. Based on the multi - modal training strategy, Qingyu can achieve an operation success rate of over 95% even with a small number of real samples, greatly reducing the dependence on large - scale labeled data. The end - point accuracy can be controlled at the millimeter level, and it can complete daily tasks such as grasping and placing. "Truly realize the deployment of flexible intelligence on the hardware platform, reaching wherever it is directed." Peng Rui said.

In the product form design, considering the multi - scenario adaptation needs of different types of users, the flexible drives of its core modules can be spliced like Lego. The length can be changed by increasing or decreasing the number of joints, and the product appearance can be changed by replacing the shell. This modular design can quickly respond to various customization requirements. Whether the length is 10 centimeters or 2 meters, or it has a metallic texture or a simulated skin, it can be delivered in a short period of time.

Peng Rui believes that the high - level decision - making ability of the human brain cannot be replaced by AI in the short term, but the physiological ability of the human body has reached its limit. Bionic flexible robots will become the best carrier for the extension of human will. Qingyu Technology focuses on solving the problem of how machines can contact humans and complex environments safely and continuously in the real world for a long time, enabling machines to work stably without relying on precise modeling and allowing machines to safely enter human living spaces.

"We are not building a specific form of robot, but exploring a brand - new physical driving method and a basic unit for human - robot coexistence." Peng Rui said.

Perhaps it is this reconstruction and imagination of the essence of "human - robot coexistence" that has led Qingyu Technology to a non - mainstream flexible path. In the process of the implementation of the embodied intelligence industry, whoever can solve the problems of safe, lightweight, and low - cost interaction first may open the door to the family.