On November 17, 2023, Deep Kaihong and Leju Robots announced the launch of the first KaihongOS humanoid robot based on open source Hongmeng.
Official information shows that the robot is equipped with dual cameras and STM32, RK3568 dual computing system, Aelos open source Hung mask version supports graphics programming, C/C++, Js/ArkTS advanced programming languages, can meet the programming needs from K12 to vocational universities.
The reason why deep Kai Hong and Leju Robot launched the humanoid robot in the facial education market is, on the one hand, because the upstream industrial chain of robots is gradually maturing, on the other hand, it may also be because of the huge development prospects of the education robot industry.
However, due to the high price, weak ecology, and the value of teaching has not been widely recognized by parents, the current penetration rate of educational robots in the C-end market is still very low. This may also mean that the KaihongOS humanoid robot is unlikely to become a hot item on the educational robot circuit.
In fact, in the past few years, the educational robot market has been no shortage of new products, and today's KaihongOS humanoid robot has attracted attention mainly because of its novel shape.
According to official data, KaihongOS humanoid robot is equipped with blood oxygen heart rate sensor, temperature and humidity sensor, infrared temperature sensor and other sensors, the size is 346mm*224mm*118mm, the weight is 1.73kg, the shell is made of aluminum alloy +PC/ABS plastic material, and the gait algorithm walks slowly 5 cm/SEC. Fast walk 15 centimeters per second.
Such sophisticated equipment is obviously inseparable from the depth of the upstream industry chain maturity technology. Taking the precision reducer as an example, the product determines the accuracy and load of the humanoid robot and is one of the core parts of the humanoid robot, accounting for about 35% of the total cost of the humanoid robot.
According to the data disclosed by the China Business Industry Research Institute, in 2022, China's harmonic reducer market size is about 2.1 billion yuan, and it is expected that in 2025, the relevant market size will exceed 3 billion yuan.
In the context of the gradual maturity of upstream industry chain technology, many companies are stepping up the layout of humanoid robot circuit. For example, in August 2022, Xiaomi released the humanoid robot CyberOne; In October 2023, Xiaopeng first demonstrated its self-developed humanoid robot PX5; In November 2023, Kepler also launched the Forerunner series of universal humanoid robot K1.
At the same time, capital has also taken action to actively layout related industries. Cailianhe Venture Capital data show that since 2023, a total of 103 investment and financing events have occurred in the field of robotics, and investors include first-line investors such as Anhui High-tech Investment, Yida Capital, and Millet Intelligent Fund.
However, it is worth noting that many humanoid robots are actually conceptual products that show off technology, or focus on the scene that is far away from C-end consumers such as industry and logistics, and KaihongOS humanoid robots have found a new way to cut into the education track.
This may be because deep Kaihong and Leju robot insight into the rapid growth of the educational robot market trend of The Times. According to the data disclosed by IMARC, in 2022, the global educational robot market size was $1.4 billion, and it is expected that in 2028, this figure will reach $3.5 billion, with a compound annual growth rate of 16.23% from 2023 to 2028.
Although with the gradual maturity of the upstream industry chain, many new products have emerged in the educational robot market, from the market dimension, educational robot related products have not yet gotten rid of the problem of "high and few" and really fly into the homes of ordinary people.
In the "Panorama of China's educational robot Industry in 2021", the Prospective Industry Research Institute said that there are currently three income models of educational robots, respectively, sales to schools, enterprises to provide packaging programs for schools, institutional training and C-end sales, the first two models have relatively considerable development, but the C-end penetration rate is not ideal. According To the data disclosed by Geffey research, before and after 2020, the penetration rate of robot programming education To C market is only about 0.5%.
Regarding the problem of the large contrast between the cold and warm markets of the B, G and C end markets in the education robot industry, it can be seen through the excellent choice that is impacting the "first stock of humanoid robots".
According to the prospectus, from 2020 to 2021 and the first three quarters of 2022, the company's revenue was 740 million yuan, 817 million yuan and 529 million yuan, respectively, of which the revenue of educational intelligent robot products and solutions accounted for 83.6%, 56.5% and 69.2%, respectively, which is an important revenue pillar; In contrast, Youbi's consumer robots and other smart hardware devices accounted for a relatively low share of revenue, 8.4%, 8.3% and 16.4%, respectively.
From 2020 to 2021 and the first three quarters of 2022, the revenue of the top five customers accounted for 66.5%, 52.2% and 64.7%, respectively. Although the company does not disclose the names of its clients, most of them are described as state-owned enterprises or government educational institutions.
The reason why the education robot industry B, G and C end of the market contrast is obvious, to a large extent because under the education information 2.0 policy, the relevant departments are actively promoting the pilot schools and other institutions to purchase education robot related products.
For example, in March 2019, the training of Zhejiang educational robot application pilot demonstration construction school was held in Hangzhou, and the meeting required that "each construction school should identify the direction of robot and intelligent technology application pilot according to the characteristics of the school, focus on the teaching demonstration work goal of educational robot, further optimize the program, make special key courses, and strive for results."
In contrast, due to the high price of related products, and the value of educational robots in teaching has not been widely recognized by parents, related products are naturally difficult to open the C-end market.
Take Youbi as an example, it launched Walker in 2018, which is China's first commercial bipedal life-size humanoid robot, with a delivery price of about 4 million yuan. According to the prospectus, from 2021 to the first four months of 2023, Walker sold 1, 8 and 1 units, respectively, bringing 8.8 million yuan, 48.7 million yuan and 2.3 million yuan of revenue to Youbi, which is better than nothing.
The reason why it is difficult for educational robots to open the C-end market is directly related to the high price of products, but on the other hand, it is also related to the lack of a prosperous ecology of products.
In April 2022, the Hunan Provincial Consumer Protection Commission announced the comparative test results of 15 juvenile robots, which showed that the current educational robot products on the market lack standardization, complex brands, and their own system, incompatible, and low openness.
The reason why educational robot products expose the above problems is mainly because the related products have not been included in the teaching planning of compulsory education or higher education, most of them are applied to extracurricular activities or cram schools, and thus show the characteristics of fragmentation and non-standardization.
In this context, whether it is for profit maximization or to grasp the core competitiveness, a number of enterprises have adopted a "one-stop" operating logic to create all self-developed educational robots from hardware to software. Reflecting to the market level, different educational robots naturally operate independently in terms of architecture, bus, software, etc.
Perhaps because of seeing the problem of ecological fragmentation in the industry, KaihongOS humanoid robots have made adjustments at the software level and adopted the open source HarmonyOS.
Official data show that in August 2019, Huawei released a new scenario-oriented distributed operating system Hongmeng OS and open source Hongmeng. As of the end of October 2023, the open source Hongmeng iteration to version 4.0, there are 51 co-construction units, cumulative output of more than 100 million lines of code; The open source community has more than 210 partners and more than 210 commercial devices.
In this regard, Wang Lei, secretary-general of the Shanghai Artificial Intelligence Society, said, "At present, market enterprises are difficult in technology development and reducing computing costs, so it is very important to realize the application of open source Hongmeng in humanoid robots, and developers can accelerate self-research and co-creation based on the underlying code logic of open source Hongmeng and the domestic ecosystem."
Of course, this doesn't mean the future of KaihongOS humanoid robots will be uneventful. At present, the price of KaihongOS humanoid robot has not been announced, if the price is too high, even if the ecological prosperity, then it is difficult to leverage ordinary consumers.
Therefore, the greater significance of KaihongOS humanoid robot may be to explain to the industry the importance of "specializing in the business". If hardware manufacturers want to make a difference in the educational robot industry, they should focus on hardware technology, and hand over the software ecology to a more professional team, so as to make the plate bigger and achieve a win-win situation.
only in this way, as the upstream industry chain gradually matures, educational machines may truly become mass consumer goods.
Source: Multi-whale Author: Good Water