In May 2017, four PhD students from Xi'an Jiaotong University jointly founded Youibot. At that time, they were working as service robots. Until June, Zheng Hao, who was at the Michelin accelerator at that time, came up with a Michelin business scenario demand, hoping to find a team to develop commercial vehicle inspection robots.

Source: Moving Point Technology

"The team in Xi'an gave me the feeling of being very pragmatic. In the process of communication, I found that although the founder is a student in school, his understanding of the market and technology is no less than that of a continuous entrepreneur from a foreign company." Zheng Hao, the partner of Youibot, recalled his initial meeting with the founding team of Youibot.

In May 2017, four PhD students from Xi'an Jiaotong University jointly founded Youibot. At that time, they were working as service robots. Until June, Zheng Hao, who was at the Michelin accelerator at that time, came up with a Michelin business scenario demand, hoping to find a team to develop commercial vehicle inspection robots. The two parties hit it off, and Youibot began to develop a professional autonomous inspection mobile robot for checking whether the vehicle tires are damaged. After a period of joint research and development, Zheng Hao decided to join Youibot

Youibot is currently introducing an autonomous inspection mobile robot, which is specially used to inspect bus tires. Buses carry the daily safe travel of citizens, so the hidden dangers of the vehicles themselves have to be paid attention to. "The tires of a vehicle are easily punctured by sharp metal foreign objects. In most cases, the metal foreign object will not pierce the tire, but a hole. When the vehicle is running, the hole will enter air and water, the metal layer in the tire will oxidize and rust, and it may explode like a time bomb in a few months." Zheng Hao pointed out the situation encountered in the operation of the vehicle's tires, while he also said: "Tire damage can have several problems: First, it can cause incorrect tire pressure and increase the fuel cost of the vehicle. Second, it takes a lot of time for the vehicle to go back to the factory for an overhaul. Third, a flat tire on a bus can easily cause injury to passengers and surrounding pedestrians."

Zheng Hao pointed out that the efficiency of manual inspection is low, and the risk of tire blowout still exists.

"Tire blowout is a terrible question. The traditional method of reducing tire blowouts mainly relies on manual careful inspection of whether there are sharp metal or foreign objects on the tire. Manual inspection requires the removal of tires, but a large repair shop has only ten stations and can only inspect ten buses at a time. However, it takes 6-8 hours for a car to check, which is relatively inefficient. Therefore, a bus in a big city has a chance to check it carefully every 3 to 6 months."

Buses keep running during the day, they will also concentrate on "rest" in the quiet late at night ". Youibot believes that this period of time is the prime time for their "physical examination. Therefore, Youibot has introduced a mobile robot for bus tire inspection, which can realize high-frequency night inspection, autonomous positioning and navigation of the station, identification of vehicles, inspection and reporting of problematic vehicles through machine vision and sensors, and all inspection data can be uploaded to the cloud. The next day, workers only need to open the cloud data to see which car needs maintenance.

Zheng Hao simulated the whole working process of the mobile robot for a bus tire inspection.

"This robot is divided into three layers. The bottom layer is the mobile chassis, the middle is the mechanical arm, and the top layer is the detection mechanism. When the robot arrives at the inspection time, he will start from the charging pile, use the Chihiro position to accurately locate the parking lot, and then use lidar scanning to identify the vehicle from the parking space. Then scan the license plate and judge whether the vehicle has been checked on the cloud that day. Next, the robot will use the radar to circle the vehicle, use the sensor to identify the tire, and select the fixed position of the tire center. Finally, the robot uses a robotic arm with sensors to detect around the tire."

It is reported that the robot can work continuously for 8 to 10 hours on a single charge, and can complete the detection of a car in 15 minutes.

Zheng Hao said that Youibot has a tacit and pure industrial robot team, and they are doing something different. "Most of the industrial scenes that use AGVs now have several things in common. One is that they are used indoors, either in warehouses or in production line workshops. The second is that most of them are fixed positioning and navigation, giving robots fixed routes. But we can use them in outdoor parking lots and move autonomously. In addition, our robotic arms can not only grab functions, but also perform more complex actions." He said. It is reported that in the process of developing robots, Youibot is designed through independent research and development because the parts available on the market are not ideal, such as metal detectors.

Youibot has completed a seed round investment of more than 2 million yuan, which is jointly invested by Xijiao 1896 Capital, HAX, Plug and Play. According to Zheng Hao, its products are currently in the research and development stage and will be delivered in June. At present, Youibot has established cooperative relations with Limeng Intelligent (Germany), Michelin Tire, and some bus companies in Shenzhen. In addition, Zheng Hao calls the future business model "Robot as a Service". He believes that it is an ideal way to provide partners with perfect robots and related services and charge service fees.

Youibot Robot has a three-tier modular structure. Zheng Hao believes that this is an opportunity for future development: "Each level can be modular, and then according to any business scenario and customer needs, Youibot can quickly customize special products."