Today, sweeping robots are replacing brooms and mops in our homes, becoming the "standard" part of modern smart home life.
However, even though its intelligence has been significantly improved, it is still afraid to face advanced functions such as whether the ground is clean or not.
In view of the above problems, at the end of August this year, the cloud whale launched the cleaning robot J3 to find the understanding method. Stubborn stains are not completely clean, the mop is dirty, only frequent hand washing, secondary pollution leads to the robot and mud, the robot can not reach the dead corner of the wall cabinet...... All these problems can be solved by the J3's "Cetacean Trusteeship" function.
▲ Cloud whale sweep robot J3
From 2016 to 2021, the market size of sweeping robots in China grew from more than 3.8 billion yuan to 12 billion yuan, according to a report from domestic data research agency Owei Yun.com. According to its online monitoring data, 2022H1 has become the first choice of current consumers with its mopping function and its own mop cleaning robot.
It can be said that the development of the category of sweeping robot has indeed entered a new stage, and its development trajectory has gradually become clear and mature, from "collision type" to more intelligent upgrade. From the market point of view, the domestic sweeping robot head brand pattern has been basically formed, it is extremely difficult to succeed from this red Sea.
Cloud Whale, founded in 2016, has become a dark horse among them. With three generations of products released in six years, it has launched many disruptive innovations in the floor cleaning robot industry.
With this as the background, wise things and cloud whale new J3 product related person conducted an in-depth discussion, understand the story behind the cloud whale sweeping robot "black technology", its technical layout and their unique judgment of the industry trend.
First, "blind wall" to "true intelligence", the way to the floor robot
At the beginning of the birth of the sweeping robot, in fact, is a vacuum cleaner with wheels, but no matter from the function or name, its core is closely around intelligent cleaning.
Since 1997, Electrolux's trilobite cleaning robot has been a prelude to intelligent cleaning robots, but it is too clumsy and expensive, so this kind of product did not take off.
It wasn't until 2002 that iRobot, known as the world's first robot to sweep the floor, introduced the Roombaseries, making its intelligence even more apparent.
After that, more intelligent upgrade points such as independent path planning and laser navigation become essential functions. The development path of this category of cleaning robot is gradually clear. Under the background of fierce competition and product homogenization, this industry has fallen into a red sea.
This is the setting for Yunwhale, but the startup is still writing its own new story.
In the past six years, Cloud Whale has launched three generations of products, and the pace of its iterations is also accelerating. In 2019, Cloud Whale first created self-cleaning mopping robot, released in 2021 "can automatically change water" the second generation of sweeping robot, and this year launched "thinking J3 small whale spirit", so that the cleaning robot completed from "free hands" to "free brain" advanced.
1, from sweeping to sweeping, open the liberation of hands new ideas
Although the sweeping robot is named "sweeping", it is actually responsible for sweeping and dragging two functions. However, cloud whale new J3 product related person in charge said, at that time, they found in the market research, the market of the robot or can only sweep, or a rag to drag the whole house, however, domestic families face the demand for mopping the floor is very strong.
As a result, consumers can only choose to sweep the floor in real use scenarios, and also need to manually mop the floor or change the mop, which increases their workload to a certain extent.
Therefore, cloud whale took three years to focus on the floor from sweeping to mopping, the first breakthrough mop self-cleaning technology, successfully into the cleaning robot market.
At the end of 2019, the Cloud Whale sweep and drag robot J1 was officially released, the relevant person in charge said: "This is the first time that consumers' hands are free from the mop washing." The triangular patent mop adopts double rotary pressure, which can improve the cleaning effect of the sweeping robot. The double water tank is introduced to form a large base station to support the mop back washing function.
Among them, Cloud Whale broke through the automatic mop washing and automatic sewage recycling technology for the first time, and introduced a large water tank in the base station, which not only changed the previous product form of sweeping robots, but also refreshed consumers' cognition of sweeping robots.
▲ Cloud whale sweep robot J1
2. See the demand of consumers, seize the new heights of automatic upstream and downstream
The second generation of product development can be said to be in line with the J1.
In the preliminary market research, they found that although the tank can free consumers from the heavy washing and mopping work, it also comes with the need for consumers to often pour clean water and drain sewage. "Many consumers choose to buy automatic water change devices in other channels, although it is not beautiful, we also realized that this feature is actually their need." Relevant person in charge frankly.
Therefore, it is natural that a self-watering J2 was born. Not only that, in order to reduce the difficulty of consumer installation, Cloud Whale also provides a complete solution including on-site service.
▲ Cloud whale sweep robot J2
Cloud whale J3 is another step in the intelligent upgrading of the floor robot.
Instead of being submerged by the Red Sea, Yunwhale has found its own development path with its pursuit of product innovation and perfection. "To some extent, this will consume more time and energy costs, but we always adhere to the 'boutique strategy', hoping to bring users and the market breakthrough, easy-to-use innovative products." The relevant person in charge told wisdom.
Facts have proved that the product strategy of Cloud Whale is correct. After the release of J1 and J2, the mop self-cleaning and automatic water upstream and downstream functions have gradually become the standard equipment of sweeping robot products.
Two, smart + clean, four major reforms to help "liberate the brain"
Sweeping robot is the representative of intelligent home appliances. The change of this kind of products cannot be separated from the continuous investment of enterprises in technology research and development.
Up to now, Cloud Whale R&D personnel accounted for more than 30%, covering hardware center, software center, testing center, industrial design center and other sub-departments. "Overall, our entire product design and R&D process is becoming more specialized and refined." Relevant person in charge said.
From the patent point of view, Cloud Whale has applied for more than 400 technical patents, focusing on SLAM (synchronous localization and mapping), three-dimensional sensing, AI object recognition, robot structure technology and other fields.
This has built the technology moat of Cloud whale, and is also its original intention of "doing valuable innovation, doing extreme products". From the product point of view, its third generation product, Cloud Whale J3, once again proved its pursuit of "ultimate products".
What the sweeping robot does is to make the ground cleaner, but often we will find that some stains can not be completely cleaned by sweeping and dragging once. At this time, consumers need to manually set relevant parameters and observe the cleaning effect of the ground all the time.
So, how about letting the robot make its own judgments and decisions? And that's exactly why Cloud Whale developed the J3.
"based on this insight into pain points, we want to provide consumers with a complete solution to make robots smarter at floor cleaning," said the company's director.
1. One-stop intelligent cleaning: independent judgment + independent decision-making
Compared with the traditional home equipment, intelligent home although in the intelligent upgrade of continuous improvement, innovation, but the resulting more and more complex setting process can not help but let the head. For example, to make different judgments for the ground of different materials, according to the degree of dirt set cleaning times, etc.
Therefore, the Whaling-hosting function of Cloud Whale J3 enables the sweeping robot to automatically adjust the humidity, underground pressure and cleaning times of the mop according to the known ground material and the perceived degree of ground dirt, so that it can complete the efficient cleaning of the ground with the corresponding appropriate parameters and times.
▲ Cloud whale J3 whale spirit trusteeship function
In addition, J3 will automatically generate a video cleaning report when the cleaning is complete.
The dark technology behind this includes Cloud Whale's original stain recognition technology. Consumers tend to look at the ground, dirty water, or sense dust with their hands, but this is a difficult task for robots to do.
So the researchers took an alternative approach, allowing the robot to sense how dirty and clean the sewage is and decide "how many times to drag the ground and how long to wash the cloth."
2, sweep and drag separation, to prevent wet and dry cross pollution
Sweeping robot from sweeping to sweeping the advanced level, can meet the basic needs of most consumers. But we can imagine that the brush under the robot is still cleaning up the dust, and the wet mop is already on the ground. The result is that both the ground and the mop are getting dirtier and dirtier.
Therefore, the sweeper manufacturer should not only realize the cleaning demand of "sweeping and dragging at the same time", so that consumers do not have to manually replace the module, but also need to consider how to prevent the cleaning robot from producing wet and dry pollution. The solution provided by Cloud Whale J3 is through the first "DirtFree cleaning, collecting and releasing system", so that sweeping and mopping to achieve the real meaning of wet and dry separation.
This sweeping robot can automatically switch single sweep, single drag, sweep at the same time, sweep after tow four modes, but also through the mop, roller brush, brush in different working scenes to adjust to different positions, effectively avoid wet and dry cross pollution, further liberate the hands of consumers. For example, in the Cetine trusteeship mode, when the robot performs bow cleaning, only the side brush of the uncleaned area will rotate normally, and the side brush that has been cleaned will stop rotating, so as to avoid the dirt on the side brush from polluting the ground of the cleaned area.
3, do not let go of any clean up dead corners, original posture
In addition, each family has its own characteristics, the size of the house, the number of rooms, the material of the floor will be big and small differences.
Now the common form of sweeping robot on the market is round, and our family will have walls, corners, etc., which is not friendly to the circular sweeping robot, so when cleaning the edge, often close to the wall of a distance will be less than clean.
Therefore, Cloud whale J3 original sweeping robot special twist forward motion posture, equipped with optical detectors that can measure the continuous position of photoelectric in the detection surface, can control the distance between the robot and the object when the robot moves along the edge of the object, so that it can extend the edge of the leakage wall corner and other clean blind areas.
▲ Cloud whale J3 original sweeping robot special twist forward movement posture
4, touch screen simplifies the operation process, the elderly can also interact easily
Sweeping robot has become a daily necessary tool in many families, so the interaction mode needs to be more suitable for most consumer groups. Let consumers use relatively simple control methods to meet their own fixed cleaning process.
The J3 base station is equipped with LCD touch screen buttons, which can help users achieve a series of basic operations. After setting the personalized cleaning plan on the APP, users can add it to the home page of the base station, and consumers can directly trigger it on the base station, which reduces the setting process for consumers.
▲ Cloud whale J3 APP related function Settings
For special groups such as the elderly, J3 base station also supports their families to remotely set up corresponding work plans for the elderly and push them to the screen of the base station.
From the point of view of function upgrade, cloud Whale to user needs first development concept throughout.
Third, the pursuit of breakthrough from zero to one, clean, intelligent upgrade to seek qualitative change
In the market of sweeping robots, Cloud Whale is based on the field of household service robots at the beginning of its birth, and its product system has been focusing on this category of sweeping robots. based on this, cloud Whale from scratch has also become a dark horse in the cleaning robot industry.
Even if there are a lot of top players in the market and they define the rules, the new players are only looking for a breakthrough from 0 to 1 in terms of how to impress consumers and build their differentiation advantage in the process.
Take Cloud Whale J3's "dirt sensing ability" as an example, Cloud Whale through the self-developed sewage sensor and a set of intelligent detection algorithm to constitute the "DirtSense sewage identification system", so that J3 can according to the dirt information intelligent decision "how long to mop", and "whether to drag again", this function is the first in the industry.
Cloud Whale related person in charge of the introduction, in the process of technology development, the research and development team through a large number of experimental tests, "what indicators represent water clean - dirty", "what is sewage" these questions abstracted into robots and sensors can understand the information.
▲ Cloud whale J3 dirty identification function
Cloud Whale's product layout has been doing difficult and correct things, not only to start from consumer demand, see its real pain point, but also take into account its products can really solve this pain point, let consumers pay. As a result, "even in the face of intense delivery pressure, we insist on every detail that might not be good enough for the user experience." The relevant person in charge told wisdom.
In this process, they should not only overturn the existing accumulation of predecessors, but also overturn themselves to start over. He added: "What keeps us going is that even though we don't know what the product is going to be, we know the direction is good for the user."
In fact, in the first product launch, cloud facing unprecedented pressure, but in the product prior to release, researchers found that the design of the two pieces of round mop cannot take care of all of the ground, in which there will be a gap between cannot drag, as a result, they can only be products come over, will change the round mop triangle mop. "This has directly delayed the launch of our product by three months, which is a very big corporate decision for us," said the official.
Compared with how to overturn the experience, a company can have the courage to deny their own courage is more important.
For example, previously, most of the common cleaning robots on the market adopted the cleaning strategy of sweeping and dragging while the design can greatly improve its cleaning efficiency, but the cleaning effect is not good, "there will be wet and dry pollution."
To solve this problem, J3 pioneered the DirtFree cleaning and retracting system, which allows the side brush, middle roller brush and mop to be adjusted to different positions in different working scenarios to prevent wet and dry mixing contamination.
In terms of the core ability of cleaning and intelligence of the robot, Cloud Whale has improved it from "liberating hands" to "liberating brains".
The relevant person in charge told the wise things, they think that the technology service product, product service user. The value of a product does not lie in the complexity and difficulty of the technical details of the product, but in what difficulties the product solves for users and what value it brings to users.
Take noise pollution as an example, household appliances are often accompanied by the consideration of noise intensity in the consumer's home scene. The World Health Organization stipulates the standard of noise, noise intensity in 50~60dB will produce considerable interference, and the current market common cleaning robot work noise in the middle of 60-80dB.
Therefore, Cloud whale adopts a full range of noise reduction silent design, in the single parts with a higher cost of silent brushless motor, structure