The same thing is that drones and underwater drones are moving from military concepts to consumer concepts;
The difference is that the underwater drone market is still It’s a competition among the best, and no one company can win the entire consumer (underwater drone) market.
The entrants of underwater drones are competing against each other
The competition among the top players is a characteristic of the current era. In this era, entrepreneurs in various fields will have many "neighbors". This is true for smartphones and underwater drones.
From a time perspective, around 2014, many players of underwater drones began to enter the game. According to Lei Feng.com, there are currently more than a dozen domestic underwater drone manufacturers in Beijing, Tianjin, Shenzhen, Shanghai and other places. Among them, most players started to enter the game during this time period, but so far, they have not appeared. Leading manufacturers like "DJI".
The specific entry time, location, and main products of each manufacturer are as follows:
In an interview with Leifeng.com, Li Zhiqin, founder and CEO of Youken Robots, said: He told Lei Feng.com without hesitation, "Youken Robots still mainly focuses on C-end products and is an outstanding enterprise in the second echelon."
Consumer-grade underwater drones are for most people , is still a strange scene, and at the same time, it is also a novel product form.
The novelty of users has brought about a new industry of consumer-grade underwater drones, and also created the Yoken robot.
Before the founding of the company in 2016, Li Zhiqin did not immediately locate the field of underwater drones. Instead, he led the start-up team to create two products: unmanned cars and underwater drones. .
At the robot exhibition of the same year, while no one cared about the unmanned car, underwater drones were frequently asked about.
"The underwater drone exhibited at the exhibition at that time was just a concept product made by our team, and even the most basic underwater sealing problem had not been solved," Li Zhiqin told Lei Feng.com, "It was also from the on-site feedback at that time that we saw the potential of the consumer-grade underwater drone market, which led to the creation of Youken Robot Company and our first product BW 1."
In the middle, there is actually a small episode. Li Zhiqin is actually more optimistic about his own unmanned car, and even equipped his own unmanned car with an intelligent following function. "This is actually the distribution robot that has become very popular in recent years. Concept, but we did not tap the market demand at the time.” Of course, the intelligent following function of the unmanned car was finally used by Li Zhiqin in its second-generation product, which was also featured in the CES 2019 main exhibition product BW Space.
BW 1 and BW Space are both underwater drone products focusing on underwater shooting. This is also a mainstream direction of consumer underwater drones. This is different from consumer aerial drones. The functions are slightly similar. Another similarity is the smart follow function.
BW Space brings the intelligent following function to its underwater drone. Press the corresponding function button on the control terminal (tablet or WiFi box similar to the drone), and BW Space can enter the intelligent following state. .
From this point of view, compared to aerial drones that have many similarities, underwater drones are considered latecomers, so it is inevitable that there will be some technical patent challenges. Li Zhiqin obviously took this into consideration.
According to official data, the main parameters of BW Space are: fastest operating speed: 1.5m/s; maximum diving depth: 100 meters; battery working time: 5-7 hours (maximum still shooting time in water 7 hours, 5 hours of follow-up shooting); video resolution: 4K (3840 x 2160, 30fps).
According to Lei Feng.com, the current mainstream parameters of consumer underwater drones are basically: 4K image transmission, 2m/s running speed, 100-meter diving depth, and about 2-3 hours of working time. From this point of view, BW Space is still very impressive in terms of parameters.
When it comes to the implementation of the intelligent following function, it naturally involves software algorithms.
Li Zhiqin told Leifeng.com that Youken’s algorithm model can now identify divers carrying oxygen tanks through picture learning. In the future, it will be realized through video learning, and it can also identify more underwater creatures and scene.
BW Space is not Youken’s first product. As mentioned earlier, Youken’s first product should be BW 1. However, on the official website of Yoken Robot, only BW Space can be seen, but BW 1 is nowhere to be seen. The reason for this is that in addition to BW Space being Youken’s main product, there are also frictions and changes in the design process of the two generations of products.
For the two products BW 1 and BW Space, Youken tried the now popular online crowdfunding.
In July 2017, BW 1 launched crowdfunding.
"At that time, our hardware part was already very mature, and the key sealing problem had been solved, but the shell has always been a problem - it could not be as light, small and beautiful as it is now," Li Zhiqin told Lei Feng.com, " We hired a well-known overseas design company to participate in the industrial styling design of the product.”
Players who have seen BW 1 will find that BW 1 looks very similar to the current BW Space. “This is because BW Space uses the shell of BW 1. During the process of replacing BW 1 with the new appearance of BW Space, the Yoken team spent a month working with Backers (crowdfunding supporters) at home and abroad. After communicating with each other, we finally adopted Backers’ opinions and adopted the stylish and lightweight BW Space design. ”
“Now that we have a new casing and our vision for the next generation of products this year, why not. How about just launching our second-generation new product and raising funds again?" At that time, this was what Li Zhiqin thought and did.
In August 2018, three months after the delivery of BW 1, Yoken’s second new product, BW Space, launched crowdfunding again. "Because the new product has added an intelligent following function (including hardware modules and software functions), upgraded the image processing module, adjusted the underwater motion control module, and completed the intelligent directional depth-fixing function. BW Space's final crowdfunding amount Reaching nearly 200 units. ”
At the recent CES 2019, Yoken exhibited its third product, BW Swimate. This product is positioned for diving or water entertainment and can be understood as a booster for diving or swimming. Compared with the previous two products, BW Swimate is different in scene positioning.
However, during the development process of BW Swimate, Youken's R&D team once again encountered new problems.
The original power could not realize the manned function, so Youken increased the power to 700W; also for manning, the battery capacity was increased to 9000mAh, and the battery life was reduced when the speed was still 1.5m/s. By 45 minutes, the diving depth has also been reduced to 40m.
It is worth mentioning that because it is controlled by humans at close range, the original signal transmission line can finally be removed.
According to Lei Feng.com, this product is equipped with a lock dial and speed button on the left and right sides of the "wing" (the speed is divided into two levels), and is also equipped with a 720P display screen. Display device parameters in real time, and can also be equipped with an external video camera or GoPro camera to achieve shooting functions.
Most of Yoken’s consumer-grade underwater drones are sold abroad. The previous two products were also crowdfunded on two foreign crowdfunding platforms.
The main players and markets are abroad, which is actually the current status of underwater drones.
At present, Youken's main sales markets are also in Europe and the United States and other countries, and it also has branches in Japan.
As mentioned earlier, the C-end market can drive product popularization and is also the main market for second-tier manufacturers. However, it has to be said that the B-end market is a bigger piece of the cake.
Of course, the B-side market also means more stringent technical requirements. First of all, underwater drone signal transmission lines are a problem.
How big is the B-side market? High-value industries including underwater oil exploration, natural gas exploration, dam inspection (engineering inspection), cable inspection and maintenance, etc. are all B-side businesses, and this also means that underwater drones not only need to have the function of image shooting, but also Functions such as positioning and data processing are also needed, as well as better sealing (greater diving depth) and the aforementioned problem of getting rid of data transmission lines.
In comparison, since consumer underwater drones are a brand new market, manufacturers have more autonomy to define products and educate the market, which will also bring about future brand and market position. Greater help.
Li Zhiqin revealed to Leifeng.com that Youken’s main products are still aimed at the C-end market, and it is also developing B-end products. It is expected that the first B-end product model will be exhibited at CES Asia this year.
At present, although consumer-grade underwater drones have been developed in-house, the market size still needs to be further developed.
Li Zhiqin revealed to Leifeng.com that an upgraded version of BW Space will be launched this year. When it comes to the recent development direction of underwater drones, Li Zhiqin summarized it as follows:
Whether it is from the perspective of manufacturers and products in 2018, or from the CES (USA) at the beginning of 2019 Judging from the exhibition, the underwater drone market is booming.
It has to be admitted that the technological research and development of underwater drones is still in its early stages. Issues such as functionality, flexibility, and cost still exist. There are still few applications in consumer scenarios, and underwater sound pickup still needs to be improved. Continuing to follow up, most models still have long "tails".
However, buyers are gradually willing to try and pay for underwater robots with underwater shooting functions or boosting functions.
When he finally walked out of the general manager's office, Li Zhiqin turned on his mobile phone to show Lei Feng.com that through distributors and online stores, Yoken had received orders for nine more devices today.
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