Anchored in pallet handling, this unmanned forklift company is valued at 1.5 billion RMB

On September 5, the unmanned forklift company Guangdong Tasker Robotics Co., Ltd. (hereinafter referred to as "Task") received three rounds of financing worth hundreds of millions of yuan, invested by Yilian Venture Capital, Zhen Fund, and Zero One Venture Capital. The three rounds of financing funds will be mainly used for product research and development, team building and market promotion. According to IT Orange data, Tasker's latest valuation (estimated) has reached 1.5 billion yuan.

Tasker was founded in May 2021. The core founding team has nearly 10 years of experience in the robotics industry and has developed a number of mobile robot products. As of now, it has more than 150 patents and software copyrights, and its products have been applied to 3C, tobacco, medicine, new energy, auto parts and other industries.

Specifically, Tasker is targeting the pallet handling process . It is understood that in traditional warehousing, many standard carrier pallets for material transfer have a very high turnover frequency, but in the past, there were no better intelligent handling robots on the market that could adapt to pallet handling except for the relatively bulky automatic forklifts. It was basically completed by manual operation, which also resulted in high cost and low efficiency of the traditional handling mode.

Zhang Xueyi, co-founder of Tasker, said that in China, there are nearly 2 billion pallets circulated each year, corresponding to the sales of 1 million forklifts and 3 million forklifts. Therefore, in the pallet handling process, the vehicles have been standardized, and there is a large demand for automation downstream, which is a huge and replaceable stock market.

From the product perspective, Tasker's product can be called a stealth pallet robot, which is very different from the unmanned forklift products on the market . It combines the form and functions of a latent mobile robot with an unmanned forklift. The overall height of the Tasker forklift does not exceed 150mm.

It is reported that forklift handling is a rigid link in industrial logistics and has a development history of nearly a hundred years. In recent years, with the iteration of product technologies such as AGV, AMR, and LiDAR, forklift handling has undergone many iterations and has begun to move towards intelligent and unmanned operations. However, the current mainstream unmanned forklifts are mostly modified from traditional forklifts. In essence, the operating logic of forklifts is still controlled by humans, and they are still subject to certain restrictions in terms of flexibility and environmental requirements.

However, Tasker's product designs the unmanned forklift into a light and thin chassis form , so that the laser radar can also be mounted on the chassis, avoiding the obstacle avoidance pain point of the modified forklift, and can achieve 360-degree laser obstacle avoidance and can detect obstacles as low as 4cm with stereoscopic vision.

At the same time, the special structural design is different from the traditional lurking jacking type (kiva-like) robot, and can directly carry the pallet without an additional carrier. In addition, because the product is in the shape of a chassis, it can rotate on the spot, move in all directions, and has no turning radius. It can pass through aisles as narrow as 1.3m wide, which is suitable for narrow aisles and other scenes where forklifts are difficult to pass.

2022 will be a short "winter" for the robotics industry, which is reflected both in financing and in the slowdown in the industry's growth rate.

According to incomplete statistics, there were 15 financing events in the mobile robot industry in the first half of 2022. Compared with the hot financing in 2021, the financing enthusiasm in the first half of the year has declined. Taking into account the delay in the release of financing information, the actual number of related financing in the mobile robot industry in the first half of 2022 is even smaller.

At the same time, data from the Gaogong Robot Industry Research Institute (GGII) showed that China's mobile robot sales in the first half of 2022 were approximately 33,000 units, a slight increase year-on-year.

However, it can be found that even though the industry is "overwintering", the unmanned forklift industry still maintains a high level of popularity.

According to incomplete statistics from Gaogong Mobile Robots, from January to August 2022, there were more than 13 financing events for mobile robot companies involved in unmanned forklift business, with a cumulative financing amount of more than 2.2 billion yuan . Dolphin Star, Jiexiang Lingyue, Mowei Robot, Muyi Robot and many others have completed financing of more than 100 million yuan. Future Robot has completed a C+ round of financing of more than 80 million US dollars. At the same time, new entrants such as Tasker are also completing financing.

In addition, according to statistics, a total of 21 mobile robot companies released new products in the first half of 2022. In the field of unmanned forklifts, Jingsong Intelligent, Huarui Technology, Mowei Robotics, Yufeng Intelligent, MIMA and many other companies have launched a total of 7 new products .

In general, the popularity of unmanned forklifts is related to the low penetration of their large application scenarios . According to data from the China Construction Machinery Industry Association, the total sales of various types of forklifts in the Chinese market in 2021 exceeded 1 million units, and electric forklifts had a high market share, with a total sales of about 660,000 units. At present, unmanned forklifts account for less than 0.8% of the market, and there is huge potential for replacement. This also means that in the future, every 1% increase in the proportion of unmanned forklifts will increase the volume by thousands to tens of thousands of units.

In order to promote the positive development of the unmanned forklift industry, GGII has joined hands with six advanced companies in the unmanned forklift field, including Future Robotics, Micro Robotics, Ajivi, Huarui Technology, Lianhe Technology, and Stand Robotics, to jointly compile the "2022 Unmanned Forklift Industry Development Blue Book" , which will be officially released at the 23rd China International Industrial Expo Robot Exhibition (RS) on September 26, 2022!

Key points: The blue book will be distributed at the exhibition site, the quantity is limited, first come first served~