Interview with Chen Shikai: Robots no longer need to tell stories丨CCF-GAIR 2017
Leifeng.com: Slamtec is a company that specializes in low-cost LiDAR and provides robot positioning and navigation solutions. So far, Slamtec's products cover all aspects of robot autonomous action, from the most basic LiDAR sensor to the upper-level positioning and navigation system, and then to the more complete robot mobile platform, which are all the directions they are currently engaged in.
On July 8, the CCF-GAIR Global Artificial Intelligence and Robotics Summit entered its second day. At the Robotics Special Session, Slamtec CEO Chen Shikai gave a keynote speech on the topic of "The Current Situation and Future Application Trends of Autonomous Positioning and Navigation Technology". After the speech, Chen accepted an exclusive interview with Leiphone.com. The following is the transcript of his conversation with Leiphone.com, which Leiphone.com has made modifications without changing the original meaning.
Leifeng.com: Many people believe that 2015 was the first year of robots. Can this be understood as being easy to make money at that time?
Chen Shikai: From the perspective of getting money, the robot market is actually not that hot, and financing institutions still have many misunderstandings about robots. However, we did complete a round of financing in 2015.
Leiphone.com (Official Account: Leiphone.com): In your speech, you mentioned that Slamtec can complete more complex tasks this year. Does this have anything to do with deep learning?
Chen Shikai: We have indeed integrated a deep learning approach. Our solution is not only online, but also supported by the cloud. The advantage of the cloud is that it can provide a better solution through the server cluster. However, the robot application cannot be completed entirely through the cloud. For example, if the robot is suddenly blocked while moving, if the robot takes evasive measures through the cloud, it may have problems due to network delays.
Leifeng.com: You started doing this in 2009, why did you only establish the company in 2013?
Chen Shikai: 2009 was not too early to start making robots. In fact, some people in the industry had started researching robots in 2000. But it was difficult for us to set up a company at that time. The direction of discussion was still online games, web games, and mobile Internet. In addition, the sensors that a robot needs to be equipped with, let alone laser radar, even an ultrasonic sensor, the toy level is more than 100, the WiFi module sells for more than 300, and there is also a gyroscope. At that time, many people in the industry were tinkering with gyroscopes, using the solution of sodium chloride to make them. Then I remember very clearly that in 2010, the three-degree-of-freedom electromagnetic compass released by Honeywell was priced at more than 300. A year later, the same model was sold on Taobao for less than 100. So we were not very mature at that time.
Leifeng.com: When did you realize that the industry was booming?
Chen Shikai: This is very obvious, it was in 2013. Just like what the research institute said, although the popularity of household sweeping robots has not reached one per person, it can be seen on Taobao that sweeping robots reached a peak in 2013 and 2014. Before, people's understanding of sweeping robots was still something that appeared in technology news. From the industry perspective, when we founded the company in 2013, it was also the time when the research and development of laser radar was completed and mass production was completed. At that time, many corresponding manufacturers also came to seek cooperation, such as DJI.
Leifeng.com: How do you achieve quantitative production?
Chen Shikai: It was a headache during mass production. At that time, many core components of laser radar were imported from abroad. Our first production was at the end of 2013. Although the purchase volume was not large at that time, it was not small for us. What problem did we encounter at that time? Our supplier re-arranged its global production capacity and removed all our agents, resulting in the impossibility of getting the goods in those months. But at that time, we had promised the customer that we would deliver the goods in April or May of the following spring. At this time, the problem was very big, because if you couldn't get the goods, you couldn't do the subsequent verification and mass production.
This was an uncontrollable factor. We had no other choice at the time. Most of the team members did not have a hardware background, so we had to create a new architecture. However, research and development takes time. In fact, the architecture we created was not used at the time. Later, we had to go overseas to find other agents to solve this problem, otherwise we would have failed.
Leifeng.com: Do you need to tell stories to investors now?
Chen Shikai: This is definitely something I need to talk about. The company still needs several rounds of financing to support it. We have just completed the B round of financing. As far as I know, we are one of the few companies in the domestic robotics industry that has entered the B round. In fact, for our industry, we don’t need a big story. It’s more about letting investors understand what our beliefs and advantages are.
Leifeng.com: In your opinion, what stage is the robotics industry at now?
Chen Shikai:
Now, for many people, buying a sweeping robot or service robot for their home is already within their consideration, so from this perspective, you can understand that robots are becoming popular. We in the industry all know a piece of data, which is Taobao's sales index. This data is not fake. If you look at the sales index of sweeping robots on Taobao, 2013 was a clear turning point, and it has been rising exponentially until now.
CCF-GAIR 2017 has come to a successful conclusion. Click to read the original article and view the full report of the conference.