Shanghai YinHang, a leading manufacturer of service robots and Automated Guided Vehicles (AGV) based on its own Machine Version Algorithm, and Newsight Imaging, an innovative semiconductor company that develops 3D machine vision sensors and spectral vision chips, are making an announcement about reaching a milestone of mass production of YinHang service robots for restaurants.
The robots provide an innovative service experience in restaurants but have applications in the much larger warehouse market. The following link provides a short video demonstrating the product based on the joint technologies (https://youtu.be/-hH05nmuPV4). YinHang’s robot is equipped with double driving wheels and a laser SLAM (Simultaneous localization and mapping) based on Newsight’s sensor, which enables autonomous operation around a restaurant.
One of the robots’ most important features is the ability to successfully navigate in a challenging environment. Its capabilities include the ability to navigate around objects such as furniture and equipment and sensing and avoiding customers as they move around the restaurant. YinHang’s engineers worked closely with Newsight's engineering team in China and in Israel to incorporate long-range, accurate 3D vision capabilities. The technology enables the robots to see distances of over 30 meters in different lighting conditions. Newsight’s sensors can support multi-triangulation and enhanced-Time-Of-Flight (eTOF™) on the same chip, providing up to 100,000 frames-per-second (fps) for a single line and 3125 fps for full resolution 1024x32 depth imaging.
Due to the ongoing pandemic, which led to dramatically reduced social contact, the service robot market thrived in 2021 and is expected to continue its significant growth. According to IFR (International Federation of Robotics), "The market for professional service robots reached a turnover of 6.7 billion U.S. dollars worldwide (sample method) – up 12% in 2020. At the same time, turnover of new consumer service robots grew 16% to 4.4 billion U.S. dollars". The leading applications, according to IFR, are Autonomous Mobile Robots (AMR), professional cleaning robots, medical and rehabilitation, hospitality robots, and automated restaurants.
YinHang CEO, Sun Yuan, said: "Our core technology is the research and development of our own machine vision algorithms and robot products. We do all the PCB, software, algorithm, mechanical structure design and production of the whole robot so that it can provide the best performance at the lowest cost. At present, we are implementing robots in warehouses and other robots that can better assist humans to improve work efficiency. In robotics, Newsight's vision sensors play an important role, and with its new generation of chips enhance the robot’s capabilities and performance."
Eli Assoolin, Newsight Imaging CEO, added: “Our great collaboration with YinHang demonstrates Newsight's unique approach to its customers. We work closely with the customer to understand their application’s need and deliver sensors of the highest quality to support their mass production. Newsight's sensors have already been successfully deployed in hundreds of thousands of robots so far, and we expect that our market share will grow significantly in the coming years."
