Author Yang Yaru? Zhang Nan
Editor Zhang Yan
Orfila (not his real name) is waiting for lunch in Zhaozhigang, Dongfang, Changsha Economic Development Zone. Soon, he received a short message reminding him that an unmanned delivery truck was delivering his lunch. Put on a mask and go downstairs. The unmanned car just walked in front of him. Take the meal and go upstairs. Don't touch anyone.
An unmanned vehicle serving as a takeaway brother can transport up to 200 meals per trip. After the staff loads the box lunch into the unmanned vehicle, they choose the destination, and the vehicle will automatically plan the delivery route "home delivery".
In areas where the epidemic atmosphere is tense, intelligent distribution robots are distributing medicines and daily necessities for patients-one robot can replace two people, greatly reducing the work pressure of medical staff.
At the beginning of 2020, the sudden epidemic disrupted the pace of people's production and life, and also promoted the "just-walking" unmanned vehicle to a large area. Companies that are keenly aware of change act quickly. In addition to large enterprises like Meituan, Cainiao and JD.COM, companies like Zhixingzhe, Gaoxinxing and Shi Yu Technology also sell their products all over China. Distribution, disinfection, temperature measurement, and a series of services that previously required manual operation have all been "unmanned".
Watchmaker/Yiou Automobile Analyst? Zhang Nan
The broad market prospect has attracted the pursuit of capital. And when ordinary people no longer look at this "alien car" with curious eyes, will it be short-lived or enduring?
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Go to Wuhan, go to the whole country
In Wuhan, an action to help fight the epidemic with unmanned vehicles has already begun.
On February 6, a "courier brother" shuttled through the streets of Wuhan and finally successfully delivered medical supplies to the Ninth Hospital of Wuhan-the first order of intelligent distribution in Wuhan. The delivery was completed by an intelligent robot with L4 autonomous driving technology.
In this rescue operation, the list of unmanned vehicle companies is still increasing, including Baidu, JD.COM and other big companies, and some startup companies have also entered Wuhan.
Watchmaker/Yiou Automobile Analyst? Yang Yaru
On the morning of New Year's Day, Zhang Dezhao, CEO of Zhixing, felt the urgency of the situation. At that time, the Wuhan version of "Xiaotangshan" Huoshenshan Hospital was under 24-hour emergency construction. Therefore, Zhang Dezhao urgently called several colleagues who stayed in Beijing for the New Year to discuss countermeasures, and decided to upgrade the previous sanitation sweepers and delivery trucks to unmanned vehicles that can be cleaned and disinfected and suitable for hospitals and other scenes.
Zhixingzhe Disinfection and Cleaning Vehicle/provided by Tuyuan Enterprise
A few days later, Zhixing was introduced by some investors and friends, and the demand kept coming to the door. Subsequently, it began to be used in hospitals in Shanghai, Beijing, Sichuan, Zhejiang and Guizhou together with vehicles donated by partners and charities.
Before entering Vulcan Mountain, Zhixing specially recruited two volunteers. "I didn't expect so many volunteers to respond to the demand that day, and soon we found two suitable candidates." This moved Zhang Dezhao. Previously, Wuhan was only open to medical supplies and daily necessities. The morning after getting the pass, Zhixing dispatched three cleaning and disinfection vehicles. On February 25th, Zhi Xingzhe's car was officially put into operation in Huoshenshan Hospital.
During this period, Lei Zhu, CEO of White Rhino, also felt heavy.
"I'm not a doctor or a nurse, so I can't go to the front line to treat patients. My major is logistics and distribution of unmanned vehicles. What can we do? " He asked himself. So, I had a conference call with the team overnight. After repeated discussions, the whole company made a decision-driving unmanned vehicles to Wuhan, and using unmanned vehicles to replace some human work to transport materials.
As for who to send, Lei Zhu naturally became the best candidate and formed a team with two other colleagues. According to official data, on February 6th, there were more than 654.38 million new cases in Wuhan overnight, which made Lei Zhu feel a little dizzy. As the father of two children, Lei Zhu had to communicate with his wife and finally got her understanding and support.
On February 6th, Lei Zhu's team set off from Beijing and drove all the way to Wuhan. The closer they are to Wuhan, the more nervous they are. Entering Wuhan, an empty city appeared in front of the three people, and the uneasy mood spread in the air.
Subsequently, after many contacts and arrangements, on the afternoon of February 19, under the leadership of Lei Zhu, the white rhinoceros team unmanned vehicle officially entered Fangcang Hospital in Guanggu, Wuhan, to undertake the task of distributing medicines and materials from the safe area to the dangerous area.
Not only Wuhan, but also unmanned vehicles have entered all parts of the country.
Materials transported by robots in Huanggang Central Hospital, Hubei Province/provided by Tuyuan Enterprise.
On New Year's Eve, Zhang Tao, CEO of Purdue Technology, received two calls from Hangzhou and Shenzhen. The customer's demand is to apply Purdue's automatic food delivery scheme to the isolation ward to deliver food and medicine to suspected patients.
From late at night to the mobilization meeting the next morning, in the afternoon, Purdue engineers went to the front line and sent six robots to the isolation point of a hotel in Shenzhen. The next day, at the centralized medical observation point in Lin 'an District, Hangzhou City, Zhejiang Province, three intelligent food delivery robots of Purdue Technology were officially employed.
Up to now, Purdue Robot has landed in more than 65.438 million hospitals and centralized observation points in more than ten provinces and cities such as Hubei, Hunan, Sichuan, Guangdong, Guangxi, Hainan, Zhejiang, Jiangsu, Anhui, Beijing, Shanghai and Chongqing. At the same time, the demand for hundreds of robots is being arranged.
Gao Xinxing, another Guangzhou-based company engaged in product development and application based on core technologies such as the Internet of Things and artificial intelligence, has launched an epidemic prevention and control system of "121n"-"1brain +2 network+1 person +N terminal" and a temperature inspection robot developed by it.
"Please wear a mask and pay attention to personal hygiene. Don't go to crowded places. If you feel unwell, please seek medical advice promptly. " On Nanjing Road Pedestrian Street, high-tech police patrol robots keep broadcasting precautionary reminders.
02
Walk into daily life
"I was going to return to Beijing 10, but my family has been banned from entering the country and I can't get out at all. After working at home for half a month, I finally heard the sound of loosening. On February 26, I quickly bought a ticket to Beijing at 9 pm on the 29 th. " Zhang Xiaowei (pseudonym)' s home is far away in the northeast, and he has long planned to return to Beijing.
On the morning of February 29th, everything seemed to have been arranged. Zhang Xiaowei (pseudonym) calculated the time and was going to arrive at the airport by train at 6 o'clock, but before going out, her mobile phone received the information of the airline boarding in advance. As a result, this seamless return to work trip failed.
In fact, the topic of resuming work and production has been endless, and the time for enterprises to resume work and production has been changed again and again. Many people are planning to return to work while waiting for the notice of returning to work. However, due to the local ban, a large number of people are still stranded in their hometown. This has also led to a business blow to enterprises, and personnel-intensive enterprises often have only a small number of people returning to work. Take the upstream industry of an automobile industry as an example. The person in charge of Huasheng Tire told Yiou Automobile that the current rate of returning to work in a factory is around 30%.
In view of the problem of enterprises returning to work, Shi Yu Science and Technology put forward a new idea, providing distribution services for some enterprise users through unmanned vehicle technology, so as to solve the problem that enterprise users slow down their work pace due to the shortage of personnel.
"At the Hong Kong airport, people are relatively dense, even during the Spring Festival. At this time, our unmanned delivery vehicle for baggage transportation just came in handy. " Wu Gansha of Shi Yu Science and Technology preached to Yiou Automobile. In the process of other enterprises returning to work, Shi Yu Science and Technology also reached a cooperation with Wuling Automobile to help enterprises solve the problem of cargo transportation under specific environment in the factory.
Port Airport Shi Yu Technology Unmanned Vehicle/provided by Tuyuan Enterprise
In addition, like most unmanned vehicle companies, Shi Yu Science and Technology has quickly completed the prototype construction of two unmanned delivery vehicles based on the self-developed U-Drive intelligent driving system, and gradually put them into closed scenes such as hospitals, communities, factory workshops, universities, industrial parks and office buildings. , realize the non-contact transportation of goods in key epidemic prevention places and solve some employment problems of enterprises.
Except JD. COM investment in logistics, in order to solve the shortage of "riders", Meituan also invested in "magic bags" of unmanned delivery vehicles in Beijing and other places. It is reported that the cruising range of this unmanned delivery vehicle is about 100 km, and it can transport 100 kg of goods at one time.
In the communication between Yiou Automobile and Meituan Company, Meituan believes that unmanned distribution can really reduce the contact between people and better ensure safety. Therefore, under the guidance of the relevant leaders of Shunyi District, the US Mission launched the exploration of indoor scenes, medical assistance scenes and community scenes respectively.
According to the introduction of Meituan, up to now, Meituan CRRC has about 30 vehicles. In response to the epidemic, Meituan has urgently optimized and debugged CRRC, and landed in Shunyi and Haidian, Beijing.
Meituan Unmanned Vehicle/Tuyuan Enterprise Official
The landing of the US Mission in Shunyi District mainly combined with the scene of buying food. In response to this scene, Meituan modified the vehicle. For example, in terms of lunch boxes, in the past, the delivery of takeout was mainly standard lunch boxes, so the configuration of lunch boxes was standardized, while the purchase of vegetables mainly distributed fresh fruits and vegetables. During the epidemic, there was a great demand for purchasing and stocking, so the lunch boxes and other parts were urgently modified before landing. In the actual distribution process, it can basically meet the needs of users. At present, Meituan unmanned vehicles can deliver 3-5 orders at a time, helping riders to undertake some heavier and farther orders.
Near the end of people's daily life, the scenes about unmanned distribution are also constantly enriched. At this time, the value of unmanned vehicles is constantly emerging, directly approaching the lives of ordinary people.
After the outbreak, Hangzhou Xixi Huafu Property Company took the initiative to find the rookie network and seek the delivery express service of unmanned vehicles, so as to reduce the number of times the owners picked up the express at the designated place in the community. The person in charge of the property said that the unmanned delivery vehicle can deliver 16 pieces of express delivery at one time, which improves the residents' gathering and queuing situation and relieves the work pressure of the staff. A resident of the community said: "I came down after receiving the call, and the process of picking up the piece was quite smooth."
"Unmanned distribution will definitely be a hot spot this year, and this demand does exist." Wu Gansha told Yiou Automobile. Meituan also said that in the case of labor shortage in the future, unmanned distribution can cooperate with riders and improve distribution efficiency, which is an important way to supplement transportation capacity.
03
The epidemic "ripens" unmanned vehicles?
In the field of autonomous driving, the unmanned delivery vehicles used in this epidemic mostly belong to two scenarios: autonomous driving municipal sanitation and the last mile. According to the report "Scenes Winning-Insight into the Trend of Automobile Industry" jointly released by Weilai Capital and roland berger, the combined market size of the two scenarios is close to 654.38 billion yuan. The market scale of intra-city logistics, RoboTxi (driverless taxi) and cross-city logistics (driverless truck) under the broader open road scene is as high as 250 billion yuan, 350 billion yuan and 750 billion yuan respectively.
Watchmaker/Yiou Automobile Analyst? Zhang Nan
"Do what you can at the right time" is the best description of the application of unmanned vehicles in the epidemic. In this process, the role of unmanned vehicles is just right.
A few years before the outbreak of the COVID-19 epidemic in early 2020-around 2016, unmanned vehicle enterprises set off a wave of "huge waves" in the venture capital circle of China. At that time, unmanned vehicle companies such as Zhixingzhe and Shi Yu Science and Technology were established one after another. Although their scale is still small, the "unmanned prospect" they represent has attracted the attention of many investors. At present, Zhixingzhe has completed five rounds of financing, large and small, attracting the blessing of star institutions including Baidu Investment M&A Department, Shunwei Capital and Jingdong Digital Branch. Four months after its establishment, Shi Yu Science and Technology received millions of dollars in Series A financing from innovation works, Zhenge Fund and other institutions, and gained the attention of Tier 1 giant Bosch in early 2020.
Can unmanned vehicles become a normalization tool for future distribution? Technology giants are also thinking. Also in 20 16, Meituan and JD.COM successively set up new project teams and business departments, and no one showed their swords. Interestingly, the two companies both named their new departments with one letter-Meituan W Project Team and JD.COM X Department. The low profile of the giants adds a sense of mystery to this new department.
20 16 is the starting point of China unmanned distribution industry. At this time, the relevant enterprises have just been established, the technology is not mature, and there is no prototype, let alone rich operating experience. If the COVID-19 epidemic breaks out at this time, driverless cars will not be able to "carry the banner".
After four years of technical research and development, actual road test and trial operation, unmanned vehicle enterprises have developed prototypes and can carry out unmanned services such as distribution and cleaning in specific areas. At the same time, they have accumulated some combat experience. Therefore, when the epidemic "black swan" strikes, unmanned vehicle companies can respond in time to meet the "non-contact" distribution and disinfection needs.
In the process of technical iteration, enterprises can even migrate the same unmanned system to different types of vehicles, and quickly give vehicles unmanned capabilities. This technology transplantation ability has played an important role in this epidemic.
Shi Yu Science and Technology resumed work on February 6, and sent two or three engineers to work with partners to urgently develop several driverless cars suitable for distribution and disinfection scenarios. Previously, Shi Yu Technology's business mainly focused on unmanned logistics, unmanned buses and other large vehicles. The reason why unmanned vehicles that meet the demand can be configured in a short time, Wu Gansha explained to Yiou Automobile: "They all use a system. This is our U-Drive intelligent driving system, which can adapt to different models and can be embedded in different types of scenes." Shi Yu Science and Technology called it "turnkey solution".
Another meaning of "turnkey" is that after the car is handed over to the customer, the enterprise can carry out a series of support services such as remote inspection, operation and maintenance, fault diagnosis and so on. This kind of remote service can reduce the labor cost of enterprises and improve operational efficiency. Zhang Dezhao told Yiou Automobile, "After the unmanned vehicle is handed over to the hospital for management, once there is a technical problem at the software level, the company can communicate with the hospital management personnel and solve it remotely. Hardware problems can only be replaced by local volunteers on the spot. " There hasn't been any problem yet. "
With practical operation experience, rapid technology transplantation and remote support services, the four-year development of unmanned vehicle enterprises has not been in vain. It is better to say that the epidemic has provided a big stage for unmanned vehicles to display their technology than to say that the epidemic has made unmanned vehicles "mature". Coincidentally, unmanned car companies have developed to this point, and the corresponding capabilities are already available.
While demonstrating their own capabilities, various unmanned vehicle companies are also under pressure under the epidemic.
"The epidemic has a certain impact on Purdue's business. Since most restaurants were closed in February, our catering robot business was greatly affected. " Zhang Tao said.
High-tech emerging body temperature inspection robot/provided by map source enterprises
Wu Dongsheng, senior vice president of Gaoxin Xing, told Yiou Automobile that the company's anti-epidemic products are mature and will continue to be deployed. As car companies gradually return to work, the company is also working overtime to "catch up with time".
Regarding the impact of the epidemic on the company's established annual plan, Shi Yu Science and Technology responded by "predicting the worst situation, making the best preparation, grasping and controlling". Wu Gansha explained that if the epidemic lasts for more than 6 months, cash flow is the most important; If there is improvement in the first half of the year, there may be a lot of demand in the second half of the year, so the company must prepare the best products and technologies to meet the challenges; To be sure, what the company has to do is to serve existing customers well when it can't visit customers in recent months.
"Consider whether to shrink or maintain or expand in the future. This is the problem we are considering now. Enterprises constantly balance between fear and greed, but it is difficult to balance. If the expansion is not successful, it is death. We hope to come to a conclusion soon. " Zhang Dezhao said.
Driverless cars are a rare industry that promotes technological development due to the epidemic. After this "epidemic", the impression of unmanned vehicles in most public minds has changed from "gimmick" to "practical".
Four years ago, the realization of the beautiful picture planned at the beginning of the establishment of unmanned vehicle enterprises seemed to be in sight. But "early adopters" will not become "normal" in the short term.
Zhang Dezhao affirmed that the application of unmanned vehicles has changed the public's understanding and usage habits, but he pointed out that after the epidemic, unmanned vehicles still face problems such as practicality and cost performance. After these problems are solved, the industry can usher in an outbreak period. In addition, the maturity of supply chain, the stability of product supply and the opening of government road rights are also the key factors for the industry outbreak.
Meituan also said that at present, there is still a certain time for autonomous driving technology to truly achieve large-scale landing, and Meituan hopes to achieve large-scale operation of unmanned vehicle distribution within 1-2 years.
Wenyuan Yuehang Robotaxi/ Tuyuan Wen Yuan Zhixing
These problems also appear in RoboTaxi. Different from the application of unmanned vehicles in hospitals, parks, factories and other specific scenes in this epidemic, the application scene of unmanned taxis is open roads, and its vehicles are fast, so ensuring passenger safety has become the top priority, and vehicles have higher requirements for cost and government road rights. This is also an important reason why RoboTaxi did not appear in this epidemic. At present, according to the national road test management regulations, RoboTaxi must be equipped with safety officers, which is not suitable for the demand of unmanned vehicles under the current epidemic situation.
But what is certain is that the epidemic has made more people see the actual value of unmanned vehicles. Although the industry will not enter the outbreak period in the short term, unmanned vehicles applied to specific scenes have begun to operate in a wider range, and the potential demand is also increasing. Zhang Dezhao predicted that "there will be some landing next year."
The era of unmanned service replacing manpower is coming.
This article comes from car home, the author of the car manufacturer, and does not represent car home's position.