The sweeping robot can also understand your room.
It is learned that the AI home robot company “Trifo (远 弗 科技)” has completed a round of financing of nearly US $ 10 million in B1. Nanjing Jiangbei Jiakang Industrial Fund, Jingwei China, Huadeng International Co., Ltd., A + Round Qingyan AI Industry Fund convertible bonds will be converted into shares in this round. FA Capital will act exclusively as FA < span>. The funds will be used for large-scale production of products, channel expansion, research and development of new generation products, and team building of the company.
Trifo is a company with continuous coverage. Founded in 2016, it focuses on smart home scenarios, and develops software and hardware systems for home robots that include technologies such as sensing, sensing, and decision-making. Continuous learning to help users interact and manage their home environment more efficiently and fun. At present, the main products are intelligent sweeping robots.
At the upcoming CES, Trifo will release the flagship cleaning robot “Trifo Lucy”, which is positioned in the mid-to-high-end market. Its main features are:
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Can be seen clearly during the day and night; Lucy monitors and provides night vision through a 1080P HDR color camera and active light depth sensor. The combination of RGB color information and depth information enables Lucy to achieve more accurate position tracking, indoor mapping and intelligent autonomous decision-making. Lucy can also monitor day and night. With the Trifo Home APP, users can view the dynamics on the mobile phone.
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Automatically identify and divide rooms; Lucy is equipped with a 6-core ARM SoC processor, with accurate and efficient mobile-side AI inference capabilities, making it able to identify and automatically divide rooms. For example, it can combine the information of the bed identified by the room and other kinds of information, and finally mark the room as a bedroom. After that, the user can specify the cleaning area through the APP.
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Avoid obstacles; Lucy combines 3D geometry and 3D scene interpretation, allowing it to recognize objects larger than 3cm in real time, such as socks and slippers, and also to identify some objects smaller than 3cm. The robot cannot recognize obstacles as large as 10 cm.
“In January 2020, we will also launch a crowdfunding event for Trifo Max, which was released last September. At this point, Trifo will have a full-scale product line of high, medium and low grades.” Zhang Zhe, founder of Trifo tell.
Trifo AI flagship-Trifo Lucy
Asking about the company’s new progress in more than a year, Zhang Zhe mentioned that in addition to completing the research and development of a full range of products, he also integrated the product supply chain system. “Trifo’s sweeping robot is a multi-sensor fusion product. We treat it as a complete robot system instead of a traditional sweeping machine.” Zhang Zhe said, “The supply chain of the robot is relatively complicated, and the hardware required is zero. There are many types of components and strict performance indicators. In addition, the current pace of upgrading consumer electronics products is fast, and every link in the entire supply chain can be clearly understood, which can better control costs, control profits and production capacity, product development and production flexibility It will also be higher. This prepares for future product upgrades and product categories. “
In addition, Trifo has established a complete sales channel at home and abroad. At present, Trifo has a relatively rich product matrix, with tens of thousands of units shipped. It has already cooperated on e-commerce platforms and offline channels in China, and has formed sales in more than a dozen countries overseas. “This year, we also established a certain brand awareness.” Zhang Zhe said.
At present, in the market of sweeping robots, there are international integrated household appliance companies (such as Dyson, Samsung, and Panasonic), professional robot manufacturers (such as iRobot, Pursunick), and traditional household appliance giants (such as Haier, Midea , TCL), Internet companies (such as 360, Netease carefully selected) and other parties to join. According to Ovie Cloud Network data, in the first half of 2019, the number of online brands of sweeping robots increased to 112, and the number of offline brands increased to 32. The price competition in this market is particularly fierce.
Zhang Zhe believes that price competition in the market is unavoidable. The key to winning more markets is how to combine the core advantages of products to find the correct market positioning. This market is large enough to accommodate the development of multiple types of enterprises. According to the industry organization International Robot Federation (IFR), the market size of home personal service robots will reach $ 11 billion by 2022. According to data from the McKinsey Global Institute, the total expenditure on the global housework market is currently US $ 11 trillion, and this number is expected to reach US $ 23 trillion in 2025.
At present, most home service robots on the market only have basic cleaning functions. Their ability to perform complex tasks such as autonomous learning of the home environment and multi-level intelligent planning and cleaning is still weak. If you take the analogy of mobile phones, the current cleaning robots are only Functional machines have not yet reached the level of intelligent machines. “A variety of AIThere is still a lot of market space for software technology to be integrated into the continuously improving hardware structure. “Zhang Zhe told.
“In the short term, Trifo plans to build a rich product matrix on the sweeper category and gain some share in the competition of smart sweepers. In the long term, Trifo hopes to enable its own home robot to achieve more “The function is more intelligent, giving consumers more choices.” Zhang Zhe said, “At present, Trifo is working on this road, the new sweeping robot can achieve room recognition, voice control, real-time monitoring and other functions. As The only mobile smart device in the family can dynamically monitor home security, personnel status, and is expected to cut into the field of home health monitoring and remote pan-medicine in the future. “
In terms of team, Trifo currently has more than 50 employees in offices in Silicon Valley, Shenzhen, and Beijing, with members from Microsoft, Intel, Magic Leap, Daqri and other companies, as well as Tsinghua, Beijing University, Harbin Institute of Technology, University of Michigan, Carnegie Mellon University And Purdue University. Trifo has more than 50 issued Sino-US patents and more than 70 Sino-US European patent applications.
It is reported that Trifo completed the A + round of financing in November 2018 with a total of US $ 11 million in financing. Investors came from Walden International, Jingwei China, Samsung Venture Capital, and Qingyan AI Industry Fund.
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