"The first day was amazing, I saw food coming from the ceiling." Kenzie Lalonde, a Canadian sports journalist, and former ice hockey player, couldn't help but wonder when she saw a robot delivering food at the Winter Olympics. In the winter Olympics restaurant, a pink robot resembling a flying saucer drops from the sky. The three "propeller blades" hold the plate open slowly to reveal the food inside. The scene was then broadcast around the world via the Internet.
Food delivery robots, which amazed athletes at the Beijing Winter Olympics, are continuing to serve the Paralympics. All kinds of robots provide a variety of convenient services for winter Paralympic athletes.
Beijing News Shell Financial reporter learned that not only in the Olympic scene but food delivery robots have also actually penetrated into every aspect of life. Food delivery robots have emerged in many restaurants, hotels, and even KTV in China.
The reporter recently interviewed manufacturers, marketers, restaurant owners, and more, to reveal how food delivery robots quietly and quickly entered people's lives.
Nurturing the market: Food delivery robots from human to dining car
Many people have had "chance encounters" with food-passing robots.
"When I went to a restaurant for a Spring Festival party, I used a robot to deliver food. Every time it delivered the food, it would sing 'You have a beautiful smile, just like flowers in spring' to remind the waiter to serve the food. I listened to it many times." Netizen a zhai does not like to eat kelp said. "Food passing robots in restaurants are much busier than waiters, humming around." "Netizen An Xiaomei said.
Shell Finance reporter noted that the current more popular robots are often shaped like food trucks, with four wheels and several layers of shelves that can place food plates. They can flexibly avoid obstacles on the road and automatically complete the task of delivering food to the designated table.
But when food delivery robots were first invented, they didn't look like this. For example, Suzhou Pangolin Robot Co., LTD., an early participant in the robot industry, introduced in its 2016 NEEQ public transfer memorandum that from 2014 to 2016, its main business changed from the original hydraulic crushing hammer to service robot. At that time, the company produced food delivery robots in four series. Shell Finance noted that all four robots were designed to resemble human waiters carrying dishes, rather than the current "dining car" image.
It took nearly a decade for the early delivery robots, mostly humanoid, to evolve into the more ubiquitous food truck.
As early as 2012, Pangolin Robotics set up a service robot RESEARCH and development lab, but challenges came with it, according to zhang's article. Service robot concept is not large, to enter the realm of the players is not much, for reference of experience in technology, how to implement landing out of the lab and become enterprise faces a big challenge, and the market has not developed rapidly, how to accurately find customer demand becomes the key to cultivate the market.
"The efficiency of our robots is much higher than that of humans in the catering industry, where labor costs are increasing due to demographic changes and there is a lot of repetitive labor," said Zhang Liqiang, co-founder of Pangolin Robot.
Also entering the food delivery robot and established in 2010, Qinglang intelligent. "From 2010 to 2013, we tried to make robots in many directions, including teaching equipment for university teachers, educational robots for primary and secondary schools, sweeping robots, high-simulation robots, welcoming robots, and so on, but none of them are suitable for long-term development. Since 2014, we have gradually decided to make unmanned delivery robots. "At that time, we saw that unmanned delivery robots were a product that would come of age in a commercial environment." Shanghai qing Lang intelligent technology co., LTD. Public relations director Chi Xiaomin told shell financial reporters.
According to understand, use the commercial room the merchants of the robot can be traced back to the earliest a self-service hotpot restaurant in Jinan in 2010, but this time, the magnetic navigation technique is adopted by the robot, the robot can only along with the paved black magnetic track movement, obstacle avoidance, even can't do the back, can only complete driving along the track to return to the meal after a circle, so the delivery efficiency is not high, It could go wrong.
From 2012 to 2022, the manufacturing technology of the food delivery robot is also constantly upgraded.
Shell Finance reporter noted that in 2016 pangolin Robot's public transfer manual shows that two of its four humanoid food delivery robots are magnetic navigation, one is based on RFID positioning technology, and the other is equipped with a variety of sensors. On February 20, 2022, a shell Finance reporter read the product introduction presented by pangolin sales staff and found that currently, the company's robot products have used SLAM robot positioning and navigation. This is also the path that most robot manufacturers in China have taken to upgrade their technology.
In addition, in the market year by year selection, dining car-shaped robots in sales have gradually replaced humanoid robots. "Humanoid robots are not very efficient at delivering food, but transforming them into food trucks allows them to increase their capacity and mobility while reducing their size, making them more efficient." Lv Cong, who is engaged in the catering industry, told shell Financial reporters.
Press the speed button: Food delivery robots go viral in the pandemic
The emergence of COVID-19 has accelerated the food delivery robot industry.
"There's more demand for contactless delivery." "For example, some isolated hotels have to use robots to deliver food, which can reduce the risk of infection," a food delivery robot dealer in Guangdong told Shell Finance.
ChiXiaoMin tells a reporter, before the outbreak, the real ground of room robots is limited and mass production ability is limited, after the outbreak, the demand for service robot blowout, hospitals and isolated points using the robot's video communication has played a good market cognitive effects, "no one distribution robots shine during the outbreak and to further improve the people's acceptance, Will accelerate the development and landing of robots in the commercial field. "Although the epidemic has eased at home, it is still very serious abroad, so the company has received a lot of orders from overseas."
According to statistics, the market size of China's food delivery robot in 2017 was only 10 million, by the end of 2020, the market size of China's food delivery robot has reached 1.16 billion yuan, some institutions predict that 2025 will be close to 15 billion yuan.
In terms of financing, relevant data show that in 2021, there were more than 120 financing events related to service robots, of which more than half were over 100 million yuan, such as Qinglang Intelligent round D financing of 200 million DOLLARS, Youbi C+ round financing of 1.9 billion yuan, You C2 round financing of 200 million yuan, etc.
According to the research report on China's Robot Industry in 2021 released by 36kr, the number of start-up projects in China's robot track in 2021 remained stable, with an obvious "80/20" effect in the industry, and leading enterprises continued to receive capital support. As of October 31, 2021, a total of 4,653 robot-related projects are included in the Whale Identification Database. Among them, there is 673 seed round to A round projects, 172 A+ round to C round projects, 22 C+ round to pre-IPO projects, 472 strategic investment and m&a projects, and 3,254 unfunded projects.
According to data provided by IFR and the China Society of Electronics, the overall market size of China's robot industry is expected to reach 83.9 billion yuan in 2021, more than double that of 2017, with a compound annual growth rate of 20.2%. In terms of market structure, industrial robots account for 53% and service robots for 47%.
According to the previous statistical analysis data of NCBD, the market size of Chinese food delivery robot in 2019 was only 220 million yuan, and the scale of food delivery robot in 2020 May reach about 1.2 billion yuan. It is expected to reach 15 billion yuan in 2025, when the proportion of food delivery robots in the overall service robot market will rise from about 1% in 2019 to about 10%, an increase of 9 times.
Uncovering demand: The gap left by the transition of service staff
So, when contactless delivery is no longer a demand, can food delivery robots still be "popular"?
In this regard, Purdue Technology marketing director Zheng Zhibin once said in an interview, the original intention of the food delivery robot development is to achieve enterprise cost reduction and efficiency, contactless delivery can only be one of the uses of this category of robots. It really needs to solve the problem of staffing in the restaurant service industry, helping human waiters get rid of the high-frequency, repetitive mechanical labor, and then food delivery robots will become a market demand.
Shell Finance reporter contacted several food delivery robot dealers as buyers, and found that the most recommended food delivery robot brands mainly include Optimus Intelligence and Purdue Technology. "If you use your own restaurant, do not need other functions just to deliver food, recommend The Qinglang T6, the price of about 18,000 yuan; If you need other functions such as voice conversations, we recommend the Purdue Bella, which costs around 28,000 yuan." A number of dealers told shell financial reporters.
"You can use the 'rent before buy' model, that is, rent first to try, if you want to buy directly to cover the difference. "Some robots need to attach positioning tags to the ceiling, while others don't. After purchase, we can attach a laptop and operate it remotely." "Said a dealer.
Shell Finance observed that technology upgrades and cost reductions are one of the reasons more and more restaurants are buying food delivery robots. "I installed a food delivery robot last year, which costs about 2,000 yuan a month, less than a waiter's monthly salary." On February 27, Mr. Zeng, who runs a restaurant in Tianjin, told shell Finance.
Chi xiaomin told reporters that a food Courier in a first-tier city earns 4,500 yuan to 5,000 yuan. "If you give him an electric car, he becomes a Courier, a delivery boy, and his salary goes from 4,000 yuan to 7,000 yuan. Therefore, many waiters are gradually turning to express delivery and take-out industries. Today, not many young people are willing to do such simple, repetitive work. There is a huge manpower gap in the catering industry. With the maturity of robot technology, the cost of unmanned delivery robot is also decreasing. As a labor-intensive industry, the food and beverage industry faces rising labor costs. Unlike ordinary waiters, robots do not ask for leave, do not know fatigue, do not need additional costs such as social security, only need a small amount of electricity per month, and are on call 24 hours a day."
Zeng told reporters that although the robot is cheap, it cannot replace human beings, but can only complement human services. "Its existence can improve the service quality of our waiters. When robots deliver food, waiters only need to come to the table to take the food, which can reduce their workload and focus more on communicating with customers and responding to their needs. Besides, children like robots, which will attract a lot of customers."
Outlook: Food delivery robots aim at high-frequency mobile fields
Shell Finance reporters searched social platforms for keywords related to food delivery robots, and found that netizens have different attitudes toward food delivery robots. One netizen liked interacting with the food delivery robot, saying it was "cute", while another commented that the robot's voice was very loud. "No one wants to listen to a robotically synthesized baby voice playing those awkward voices."
"Some brand restaurants have high labor costs. Many attempts have been made to save costs, such as introducing robots, but the food delivery robots are not sensitive enough and can only be used during off-peak meal times. It's easy to build a machine on four wheels, but that's just a machine. A machine with artificial intelligence is a robot." "Netizen Crooked Y son said.
Lu cong told reporters that only when AI voice interaction and other technologies mature, robots will be able to compare with human servers, which is impossible in the short term, but with current technology, food delivery robots can do a lot, and have withstood the test of the market.
"The key to unmanned delivery robots is movement, and movement is running errands. What kind of scenes in life and who are doing legwork, that is the potential market of this industry. In line with this principle to look for, you'll find the restaurant dishes member need to ran, take-away member and high-frequency Courier need to running to high frequency, small hospital nurses need to ran between fixed-point high frequency, security patrols in the market needs, circling back and forth, cleaners cleaning work also need to move around, etc. As a result, there is a lot of high-frequency mobile work, and it is very mechanical and does not require creativity. Those are the kinds of jobs that can actually be done with robots, and that's where we're going to be in the future." Chi xiaomin said.
