SIASUN(300024) -·2024-11-07 08:16Key Points Company Overview - Establishment and Team: Sichuan Fude Robot Co., Ltd. was founded in 2012 with a team of experienced robotic developers. The founder, Hu, has won awards in domestic and international robot competitions. The company initially focused on non-standard automation and core robotic component research and development, now holding nearly 60 invention patents and a total of about 150 patents. - Product Range: The company produces harmonic drives, with an expected shipment of 53,000 to 55,000 units this year. They have developed core processing equipment for complete self-sufficiency in production processes, significantly reducing costs and achieving a gross margin of over 30%. - Applications: Harmonic drives are used in industrial and humanoid robots, serving customers like Zhejiang Humanoid Robot Center, Sydney Kepler, and Galaxy General. Sales volume increased by over 30% in the first half of the year, with a gross margin rising from 16% to over 30%. - Specialized Robots: The company has extensive experience in specialized robots, including handling card source accidents and developing nuclear emergency robots and gamma radiation source survey robots. These projects demonstrate the company's technical capabilities and lay a foundation for future product development. - Future Direction: The company plans to optimize harmonic drive performance, expand its applications in more industries, develop integrated joints and humanoid robots, and improve production efficiency and cost-effectiveness through self-developed equipment and processes. Harmonic Drive Achievements - Development and Production: The company began developing harmonic drives in 2012 and achieved mass production in 2019. This year's expected shipment is 53,000 to 55,000 units, with 44,000 units shipped by October. The market recognition of harmonic drives has significantly increased, and the company has achieved complete self-sufficiency in production processes through independent research and development of core processing equipment, significantly reducing production costs. The gross margin has reached over 30% and has room for further improvement. Market Application - Applications: Harmonic drives are widely used in industrial and humanoid robots, serving customers like Zhejiang Humanoid Robot Center, Sydney Kepler, and Galaxy General. Through Oben, the company also supplies products to companies like Fourier Resources. Sales volume increased by over 30% in the first half of the year, with a gross margin rising from 16% to over 30%. Specialized Robot Cases - Cases: The company has successfully handled card source accidents in Henan Qixian and番禺, Guangdong in 2009, the first time robots were used in such events in China. They have also developed specialized integrated cases such as nuclear emergency robots, gamma radiation source survey robots, and flying star maintenance robots. These projects demonstrate the company's technical capabilities and lay a foundation for future product development. Future Development - Direction: The company plans to continue optimizing harmonic drive performance, expand its applications in more industries, develop integrated joints and humanoid robots, and improve production efficiency and cost-effectiveness through self-developed equipment and processes. Humanoid Robots - Models: The company currently has three main humanoid robot models: T1PRO, Alpha, and TE mini, targeting high-degree-of-freedom prototypes, tool-type robots, and entertainment and scientific research markets. The company plans to achieve market landing through reasonable pricing and provide different functional structures to meet diverse needs. Collaboration Robots - Progress: The company's collaborative robots have started small-scale shipments, with sales of about 10 to 20 units. The product was launched in the first half of the year and has been applied in various scenarios such as university artificial intelligence research, health care industry massage, and machine tool loading and unloading. The collaborative robots have ultra-lightweight characteristics, with a self-weight of about 8 kilograms and a gripping ratio of up to 1:1 and 2:1, reaching the highest level globally. Composite Robots - Development: The company is developing wheel-mounted composite robots using self-developed control technology, mechanical arms, and integrated joints. These technical accumulations enable the company to have complete self-research capabilities from harmonic drives to other core components. The first-generation humanoid robot prototype was officially launched at the end of last year, with a measured weight of only 4.3 kilograms, equipped with a 1.25 kilowatt-hour battery, and with up to 71 degrees of freedom, of which 41 degrees of freedom are concentrated in the body, reaching the highest level in the industry. Humanoid Robot Characteristics - Characteristics: The company's humanoid robots use completely self-developed core components such as harmonic drives, drives, and servo motors, with only laser radar, 3D cameras, and a few sensors using third-party products. The hip joint peak torque can reach 450 Nm, and they have strong strength, with a double-leg load-bearing squat of 125 kilograms and a single-leg load-bearing squat of 65 kilograms. These performance characteristics provide a solid foundation for industrial scenarios or handling. In addition, the humanoid robots can achieve straight-leg walking and use an end-to-end neural network control scheme based on reinforcement learning. Innovation Patents - Patents: The company has multiple innovative patent technologies, including hip joint spherical design, which can achieve a peak torque of 450 Nm and include two degrees of freedom; seven-degree-of-freedom leg design, which adds a rotating degree of freedom to the lower leg; and a six-degree-of-freedom waist design, which can tilt forward and backward, tilt left and right, rotate vertically, and move left and right. In addition, they have designed a biomimetic scapula, which allows the shoulder to perform forward and backward shrugging and up and down shrugging movements, all of which originate from the ultra-lightweight and high-torque characteristics of the integrated joints. Development Direction - Direction: The company plans to further develop humanoid robots based on different application scenarios to meet various needs. At the same time, they are developing simplified artificial intelligence robots for cost-sensitive scenarios such as retail and elderly care. Currently, they have the ability to reduce the cost of humanoid robots to less than $20,000, which will further enhance their market competitiveness. Latest Progress and Application Scenarios - Progress: The company has made significant progress in the field of humanoid robots. In the past six months, their humanoid robots have participated in multiple exhibitions and have been widely reported by media such as CCTV, Xinhua News Agency, and Dongfang Satellite TV. Especially last month, CCTV reported on the robots for a long time at the artificial intelligence conference. The application scenarios of humanoid robots are very extensive, including aerospace, logistics, and education. Currently, due to some shortcomings in control technology, they are unable to demonstrate smooth movements, but it is expected that these functions will be realized soon. They have provided small batches of humanoid robot prototypes to many universities, including Zhejiang University, Chongqing University, and Southwest University of Science and Technology, to further jointly develop artificial intelligence technology. In addition, they have an important military project, namely humanoid robot pilots. China has a large number of old fighter jets such as J-5, J-6, and J-7, which cannot be transformed into informationized aircraft or the cost of transformation is too high. Using humanoid robots as pilots is a cost-effective and adaptable solution. The United States and South Korea have already successfully put similar solutions into use, and China began to study this field several years ago. Their robots are lightweight and strong, which exactly meet this application requirement. Currently, the project has entered the actual test stage, with the goal of achieving basic aircraft takeoff in the first half of next year and further optimization in the second half of the year to prepare for small-scale mass production. Product Models and Positioning - Models: The company currently has three main humanoid robot models: T1PRO, Alpha (Alpha), and TE mini. T1PRO is the first-generation prototype, with a height of 1.6 meters and a high degree of freedom. Alpha is based on T1PRO and has been trimmed to look more like a Chinese male, with a height of about 1.67 meters and a degree of freedom controlled between 40 and 50, positioning as a tool-type robot, with a price range of 150,000 to 250,000 yuan. TE mini is a small-sized version, with a height of about 1.3 meters and a degree of freedom between 30 and 40, mainly targeting entertainment and scientific research markets, with a target price of about 100,000 yuan. These products are designed to achieve market landing through reasonable pricing and provide different functional structures to meet diverse needs. Business Performance and Gross Margin - Performance: The company's harmonic drive business performed well this year, with a total sales volume increase of 30% and a significant increase in gross margin. This is mainly due to the increasingly mature production process and increased production. In addition, the product quality has continuously improved and has been recognized by more customers. However, the issue of dependence on large customers has not been completely resolved, but the number of new customers has increased significantly, more than twice the number of last year. However, the new customers have not yet formed large-scale orders because it takes a long time for industrial harmonic drives to be introduced as new suppliers and tested. Therefore, these new customers have little impact on sales in the short term, but the future prospects are promising. Joint Technology and Development Prospects - Status: The joint technology solution for humanoid robots has not yet been fully converged. The upper body generally adopts the harmonic drive solution, while the lower body still has various solutions, each with its advantages. Therefore, the demand for harmonic drives for humanoid robots has a high degree of customization and needs more time to form large-scale orders. However, once humanoid robots are widely popularized, the demand for harmonic drives will increase significantly. A humanoid robot requires about 10 harmonic drives, which will drive the growth of related businesses. In addition, the company is exploring new application scenarios in the military field, and currently has two or three projects that may form a certain sales volume, bringing new growth points in 2025. Capacity Reserve and Capital Market Financing - Capacity Reserve: The company is actively planning to meet future large-scale production needs. Due to capital market reasons, a round of private placement was temporarily terminated this year, but another round of financing is being promoted, with a current valuation of 700 million yuan. If it is successfully completed, the next round of private placement will be launched according to product conditions, with a pre-funding valuation expected to reach 1 billion yuan. They hope to raise 100 million to 1.5 billion yuan to develop humanoid robots and their core technologies. These funds will help accelerate technological research and development and market promotion to achieve wider application. Expansion Plans and Investment Goals - Expansion Plans: The company plans to expand the production capacity of harmonic drives to 50,000 to 100,000 units by 2025. Currently, the maximum annual production capacity of the factory is more than 60,000 units, and this year's expected production capacity is more than 50,000 units, with the capacity utilization rate approaching saturation. Therefore, the company is planning to further expand production capacity. If an additional 50,000 units of annual production capacity is added, the equipment investment is estimated to be 30 million yuan, which is only a fraction of that of other companies in the industry, demonstrating significant cost advantages. In addition, the company has purchased a piece of land in Zhuhai and plans to start the construction of a new plant through an 80 million yuan private placement. If the military project is successfully signed, an additional 100,000 units of annual demand will be added, and the company will further expand the production capacity based on the 100,000 units in 2025. By 2026, the humanoid robot market may have a slight increase, and the company will further deploy the production capacity of harmonic drives according to market demand. New Product Placement and New Business Establishment - Placement: The discussions have resulted in the decision to retain the harmonic drive and humanoid robot businesses within the mother company, Tian Tian Robot. For new businesses such as collaborative robots, composite robots, and new application fields such as nanocoating technology, the company may establish new subsidiaries or cooperate with resource parties to establish joint ventures. At the beginning of this year, the company established a wholly-owned subsidiary in Shandong to promote surface strengthening technology, which is not only applied to harmonic drives but also targets the market demand for guide bearings in the automotive industry and special bearings for rolling steel in the steel industry. Humanoid Robot Reinforcement Learning Training - Data Volume and Success Rate: Currently, the specific success rate has not been counted, but the company indeed has relatively few artificial intelligence accumulations in humanoid robots, so more efforts have been focused on hardware and the cerebellum. Currently, functions such as walking and target recognition have been integrated, but the operation based on large models and its generalization ability still need to be improved. The company has actively cooperated with Tsinghua University teams and downstream partners to leverage their artificial intelligence capabilities to accelerate the landing capabilities. In the demonstration, the walking of humanoid robots is based on reinforcement learning methods rather than traditional algorithms. Currently, they are using the NVIDIA Isaac platform for training. Most groups have abandoned the previous MOTOBASIS method and turned to reinforcement learning solutions this year. Due to time constraints, they directly adopted the reinforcement learning method and did not continue to study the MOTOBASIS solution. Differences in Ability in the Field of Double-Legged Robots - Factors: The differences in ability among different teams in the field of double-legged robots mainly come from the quality and quantity of training data, the selection of models, and the influence of hardware characteristics. Although hardware has an impact on performance, the greater differences come from the algorithms themselves and the training framework. Taking NVIDIA as an example, it has recently launched a small model specifically for humanoid robots, demonstrating its leading position in technology. In the future, only a few large companies like Google and NVIDIA will have the ability to carry out complete end-to-end large model training and maintain a leading position in technology. Therefore, a few companies may dominate the market, providing standardized models, while other companies can adapt and optimize based on these models to achieve functions. Competition of Small Humanoid Robot Companies - Competition: Small humanoid robot companies may face significant challenges because they are unable to compete with large companies in large model training. However, these companies can enhance their competitiveness by focusing on hardware performance, appearance design, weight control, cost management, and reliability. In addition, they can use general models provided by large companies to form their own characteristics through localization or optimization to meet the personalized needs of customers in different scenarios. For example, in China, most human-computer interaction companies currently focus on hardware, and can develop differentiated development to play competitive advantages in specific application scenarios. Cooperation with Huawei - Cooperation: The company has not yet engaged in cooperation with Huawei in the field of humanoid robots and related software, large model operating systems, and other aspects. However, the company was invited to participate in the Silei meeting, but the meeting was postponed for some reasons. Harmonic Drive Improvements - Improvements: The company has optimized the harmonic drives for industrial robots, collaborative robots, and humanoid robots according to the Japanese HD standard, focusing on improving accuracy, rigidity, life, and noise control. Specific improvements include surface strengthening wear-resistant technology and material and structure optimization, bringing the performance close to the global leading level. In the design of harmonic drives for collaborative robots, the company has developed a new type of ultra-lightweight and integrated harmonic drive, integrating the servo motor into the reducer to achieve a significant reduction in volume and weight. This innovation enables the collaborative arm to reach the highest gripping ratio of 2:1 globally. In the application of humanoid robots, the company further optimizes the transmission efficiency, improves transparency, and integrates the motor and reducer to make the joints easier to install. In addition, force control functions are integrated to meet the special needs of humanoid robots. These improvements make harmonic drives in different fields have different price and load characteristics, adjusted according to specific application scenarios. Price and Load Differences - Price and Load: Currently, the price of human resources and collaborative robots is relatively high, mainly due to the cost of redesign and the insufficient current market demand. In contrast, the cost of industrial integration is the lowest. However, with the increase in future market demand, it is expected that the price of human resources-related products will decrease in three years and may be lower than the current price of industrial harmonic drives. This is because the civil market has higher requirements for cost control. The company will strive to respond to this trend by improving the quality of reducers and reducing costs. Load Capacity in Different Fields - Load Capacity: Industrial harmonic drives have relatively low load capacity requirements because the volume of equipment in industrial applications is not strictly limited, and larger models can be selected to meet load requirements. For ultra-lightweight collaborative robots and humanoid robots, due to volume restrictions, high load capacity needs to be achieved in a limited space, which requires more technical investment. However, the precision requirements of humanoid robots are slightly lower than those of industrial applications, so some trade-offs can be made. Role in the Humanoid Robot Industry - Role: The company is the first local enterprise in Sichuan Province to achieve ground walking humanoid robots and has received attention from provincial departments. The company's clear positioning is to focus on the research and production of humanoid robots, which is the core direction of the company's future development. Competitive Advantages Compared to Competitors - Competitive Advantages: The company's biggest competitive advantage lies in cost control. Currently, the performance of the company's products is not inferior to Midea, but there is still a gap with HD. This year, the average selling price of the company's products is about 550 yuan, with a gross margin of about 30%. Greenland Slope currently sells for about 700 yuan, and its gross margin may be affected by price cuts. The company has achieved significant cost advantages through independent research and development of core supporting equipment such as cutting tools, fixtures, clamps, consumables, and machine tools. In addition, the company plans to carry out production line automation transformation in 2025 to further improve quality and reduce costs. Cooperation with Tesla - Cooperation: Currently, the company has no substantial cooperation with Tesla in the field of humanoid robots.