According to 36Kr's report, VisionNav Robotics, a global leader in driverless industrial vehicles, announces its completion of B2 round funding end of 2020. The funding is led by IDG Capital, Lenovo Capital, Eastern Bell Capital and Flyfot Ventures continue to follow the investment. This funding will be used for new technology and development of driverless industrial vehicles, and large-scale promotion in automobile manufacturing, FMCG industry and petrochemical industry, as well as to expand overseas market and develop new customers.
Statistics shows that domestic industrial vehicle sales in domestic market is about 810,000 units in 2020, of which driverless industrial vehicle sales is only 3,500units, accounting for less than 1%. The reason is that current driverless industrial vehicle products cannot meet the needs of customers' existing internal logistics modes, for example peak efficiency imcomparable with manual operation, high requirement of precision operation, and self-adaptable to a variety of complex scenarios. The industry believes that the key to change this situation is to improve the level of flexibility of driverless industrial vehicles and logistics solutions. Since the year of 2020, VisionNav Robotics has successively knocked down the most obvious barrier in core scenarios and released flexible solutions within logistics nodes, such as truck loading and unloading, multi-layer movable stillage cages stacking, high level material put-away and picking, etc., helping clients to achieve the flexible upgrade of driverless logistics, and successively implement the large-scale promotion in various industries. Over the past five years, VisionNav Robotics has served more than 100 clients, for more than 20 Fortune 500 companies, and is now the market leader.
In the past five years since its establishment, VisionNav Robotics has continued to increase its investment in research and development, improving the positioning, sensing and control ability of driverless industrial vehicles, and made a number of breakthroughs in the past two years. The peak efficiency of driverless operation is close to the human efficiency, which greatly shortens the gap between driverless industrial vehicles and manual operation; The millimeter-level high-precision positioning and control capability can accurately complete the forking, stacking, putting away and picking, and adjusting misplaced loads, improving task completion level of driverless industrial vehicles. Also, the driverless industrial vehicles are getting more adaptable to complex scenarios, and are capable of completing tasks more safely and efficiently in highly human-machine co-working field. VisionNav Robotics will continue to distribute the application of self-driving architecture in driverless industrial vehicles and realize productization to further meet the demand for flexible driverless logistics with "smarter" vehicles.
Xin Wang, partner of IDG Capital says: We are very optimistic about the long-term development of driverless forklifts, which will be used everywhere in warehousing logistics and factory workshops in the future. At the same time, AI empowers flexibility to its fork end operation, which is an integration of driverless technology and robotics technology in closed environment. With long-term accumulation and persistence in the field of machine vision, VisionNav team has formed its own core technology in controller and machine vision, which not only can provide more cost-effective products, but also significantly expand the application scope of products and serve clients of more industries.
Zhiqiang He, Senior Vice President of Lenovo Group and the President of Lenovo Capital says: data intelligence empowering all industries will be the biggest industrial opportunity in the future. VisionNav Robotics is using core technologies such as autonomous driving, machine vision and AI to significantly improve the efficiency of manufacturing and logistics industry, to quickly complete the landing of projects in many fields and to achieve technical breakthrough to solve inelastic demand, growing into an absolute leader in the industry. We will continue to support the future development of VisionNav Robotics with Lenovo Group’s industrial resources, build an intelligent ecosystem, and jointly promote the intelligent development of Chinese industry.
Guangxi Wang, vice president of Lenovo Group and partner of Lenovo Capital says: With the gradual clarification of business development and scene demands, the explosive period of driverless internal logistics upgrade will come rapidly. VisionNav Robotics has key advantage of autonomous driving technology architecture with machine vision as the core, and has established a solid barrier in driverless logistics. Lenovo Capital has raised its two consecutive rounds on VisionNav Robotics believing it will soon join the star cast of autonomous and driverless industrial vehicles with its highly competitive product matrix and commercialization system.
Tao Tang, partner of Eastern Bell Capital says: The world’s driverless logistics industry is currently growing rapidly, and the Chinese market is shifting from catching up to leading. During the epidemic, low-speed autonomous driving technology has played a key role in logistics and distribution and many other fields. with the attention from investors continually rising, low-speed autonomous driving is on the eve of outbreak. As one of the leading developers of low-speed autonomous driving framework in China, VisionNav Robotics has independently developed a number of high standard products and driverless logistics solutions based on its core technologies. By integrating superior resources to actively seize market and promoted the large-scale landing of autonomous driving technology around the world, VisionNav Robotics has showed its powerful strength. We expect that VisionNav Robotics to continue to play its advantages and create more value in flexible driverless logistics nodes.
About VisionNav Robotics
Founded in 2016, VisionNav Robotics is engaged in the technology development and production of driverless industrial vehicles. Combining driverless industrial vehicles with computer vision, motion control, artificial intelligence, deep learning and other technologies, VisionNav Robotics has developed driverless logistics solutions that is both flexible and efficient, and been promoting the process of flexible driverless upgrading within logistics nodes globally.
