"Specialized special new" science and technology secret

Excerpted from the Beijing News "Behind the" Heaven into the Sea ": Incubating the" little giant "need to build a good ecosystem"

Reporter Luo Yidan

Editor Xu Chao

The "blue claw", as flexible as a human hand, gently grabbed the lid of the teapot, and steadily picked up the teacup, filling, brewing and pouring tea, and a whole set of actions were smooth like flowing clouds. Recently, SRT software robot accepted the interview of shell finance reporter.

"Even strawberries can be picked automatically without breakage." Shan Xuemei, director of software robot research and development, introduced that as a national specialized special new "little giant" enterprise, software robots can realize nearly 96% of special-shaped and vulnerable items in industrial production, and the "secret" is hidden in the flexible claw at the front end of the robot, which involves elastomer material technology, structural design and control technology, and high technical complexity. There are only two companies in the world.

Bao Lei, the founding team member and chief technology officer of the soft robot, said in an interview with Shell Finance reporter that the soft robot is derived from bionics, mimicry research on soft organisms in the ocean, and realizes the smooth and continuous smooth movement of underwater organisms through the flexible bionic prototype model made of flexible silicone materials. And build a robot system with high adaptability to the environment.

"Initially, my lab team at the Beihang Robotics Institute was working on underwater biomimetic fish, and we found that we could use flexible materials to make flexible actuators to better simulate the underwater continuum or the motion patterns of soft organisms, and then we joined the emerging interdisciplinary research trend of soft robotics." "Mr. Barre said.

Bao Lei told reporters that when seeking how to convert the research advantages of bionic robots into application landing, he and team members initially thought of making bionic starfish, but one day, someone picked up the middle part of the "starfish" and let its five legs hang down, which became a claw, "in 2015, A number of food processing companies approached our lab, so we conducted market research and found that the flexible grippers really had applications in the food industry to replace repeated manual handling operations, which is why we started this company."

In 2016, the software robot company was officially established, as a company that came out of the laboratory, Bao Lei said frankly, "When doing research, it is more interest-driven, we have some good ideas to realize, and finally converted into some scientific research results." And when you're a company, you need to gradually become demand-driven. What are the problems in the market waiting for us to solve, and what are the technical means we use to make a suitable product to solve the corresponding problem."

Bao Lei told reporters that in the process of technology research and development, the biggest bottleneck is that the technical development of soft robots themselves is still in the initial stage, "it began to rise in 2010, 2015 only the first paper to define soft robots, the entire technical field is very new, although it has produced a lot of academic achievements, but its technical system and theoretical integrity is not perfect." "At present, the new products we develop in soft robots are partly dependent on a lot of experiments, demonstrations and cross-validation, and lack the complete theoretical support that allows us to design better products with more certainty."

The reporter learned that over the years, the software robot company has continued to cooperate with many colleges and universities such as Beijing University of Aeronautics and Astronautics, Beijing University of Chemical Technology, Tsinghua University. With technical advantages, it has won more than 100 R&D patents and science and technology awards at home and abroad.

"We are very focused on this technology direction and are committed to developing it deeper and more thoroughly and applying it to various industries and fields." In terms of accuracy, in addition to bringing a lot of scientific research results from the school, we also paid attention to the underlying theoretical research and experimental verification of soft robots. In the process of moving soft robots from laboratory or prototype to production, we have accumulated a lot of material parameters, processes and manufacturing techniques. For example, how to mix better elastic materials, how to make the process more standardized, and the consistency of product life reliability has been improved. We have established complete manufacturing processes, specifications and standards for various flexible actuators." "Mr. Barre said.

Bao Lei said that in the past two years, the government has given software robots a lot of policy support, including research and development subsidies and rent relief, "the government has given us enough support, if the enterprise does not do well, it is the enterprise's own problem."

It is understood that in June 2023, the software robot completed a new round of financing of nearly 150 million yuan, and this round of financing was jointly invested by CITIC Goldstone and Shenqi Capital and Hot Star Fund. The investor said that the software robot company is committed to providing the overall automation industry solutions for the industrial field, not only can effectively solve the industrial industry automatic handling of vulnerable items, but also can provide enterprises with the overall solution of automation upgrade, "We continue to pay attention to China's industrial automation upgrade, but also believe that software robot companies can contribute to China's industrial automation." "