Midea's high-profile entry into the service robotics track with the launch of its new brand “WISHUG”

June 9. home appliance giant U.S. officially released a new brand of home service robots - WISHUG, and officially announced that the first product is a small but “family” service robots, plans to go on sale in the second half of this year, the future will be set up to operate independently of the entity.

Science and Technology Board Daily reporter noted that, in addition to traditional home appliance enterprises, emerging startups have also entered the game. According to incomplete statistics, in 2021. 113 financing events related to the service robot track, with a financing amount of more than 44 billion yuan.

Behind the frantic influx of enterprises into the robotics industry is aimed at potential market opportunities. According to data from the Chinese Institute of Electronics, China's service robot market size was 30.26 billion yuan in 2021. and is expected to exceed 60 billion yuan in 2023 .

“Just as the emergence of smartphones opened the era of the mobile Internet, and electric cars led the way to bring in the new energy era, family service robots will open a new era in the future. In the not-too-distant future, every home owns one of these service robots.” Tang Jian, Chief AI Officer and General Manager of AI Innovation Center of Midea Group, said to the reporter of Sci-Tech Board Daily.

Service robot blue ocean shipping channel has emerged

“In the not-too-distant future, every home will have its own robot.” This is the vision put forward by Bill Gates as early as 2007 in the Global Science magazine. And Tesla founder Musk also pointed out at the 2022 TED conference that by 2050. all homes will have universal humanoid robots, meaning that every home will have a robot nanny.

CICC pointed out in its research report that the service robot market, after the emergence of entry-level products such as sweeping robots, the industrial chain has been basically formed, and it has gradually entered the stage of intelligence, diversification and popularization, and it is the next intelligent terminal in the era of the Internet of everything.

In Tang Jian's view, service robots do have the potential to open a new era and become a new generation of explosive consumer products following PCs and smartphones.

Tang Jian, Chief AI Officer and General Manager of AI Innovation Center of Midea Group

At present, home service robots can be broadly categorized into vertical scene-oriented home appliance robots, children's companion education robots, and human-machine interactive integrated service robots. Most of the mature products on the market are in the first two categories, such as sweeping robots, glass cleaning robots, and has given birth to a number of listed companies such as Stone Technology and Corvus.

Comprehensive home service robots, because of its high standards in hardware and software and the complexity of the algorithm technology, only a few players such as Amazon, Samsung and other players to enter the game.

Tang Jian believes that although the comprehensive class of home service robots is still in the early stages of development, it is a blue ocean market worth exploring.

“Home service robots are the entrance to whole-house intelligence and the carrier of home central control. Our prediction is that in the near future, every home will have such a service robot, acting as a housekeeper and assistant, and it can be said that the market outlook is very broad.”

Who is the central brain of whole-house intelligence?

The small but family service robot launched by the United States will cover four major functional segments: AI housekeeper, family assistant, security guard, and technology playmate.

Through LIDAR fusion 3D camera, Xiaoyi robot will autonomously explore and build a 3D map of the home, record and automatically update the location of furniture and rooms. When the owner sends a command, the robot can move to the corresponding place according to the command, and complete the delivery of goods, messages and other operations.

When the owner is not at home, Xiaowei will autonomously recognize whether the refrigerator door, TV, and windows are closed, listen to smoke sensors in real time, and so on, and push the alarm when it finds abnormalities.