LeiShen Intelligent System Co., Ltd. has been focusing on breakthroughs and innovations in lidar technology since its establishment. Up to now, the company has already released multiple series of lidar products such as auto-grade hybrid-solid state lidar, multi-line mechanical lidar, etc., which are applied in various industries like smart logistics, intelligent driving, smart transportation, rail transit, high-end surveying and mapping, robotics, security, ports, industrial automation.

In addition to the 3D lidar hardware, LeiShen also creatively launched the “3D Lidar SLAM AMR Solution”, which has attracted wide attention from the industry and has achieved substantial results in the end users’ application. In the years to come, Leishen is planning to promote the AMR solution to realize large-scale application, which will change the competition pattern and shake the entire industry. Hu Xiaobo, founder & CEO of LeiShen Intelligent, said: "The ‘3D Lidar SLAM AMR Solution’ contains the power to subvert the entire traditional forklift industry!"

Three major pain points limit the large-scale application of traditional AGV

According to the statistics of the Special Equipment Safety Supervision Bureau of the State Administration for Market Regulation, a total of 221 on-site motor vehicle accidents occurred across the country from 2015 to 2019, resulting in 209 deaths, 44 injuries and the fatality rate is as high as 94.57%. And most of the forklift accidents are caused by human factors.

Apart from safety issues, the shortage of labor and the difficulty in recruiting skilled forklift workers are also driving forklifts to AMR transformation. However, the traditional AMR has not been scaled yet.

Statistics show that the domestic sales volume of forklifts in 2020 are around 800,200 units. According to the data of the New Strategic Mobile Robot Industry Research Institute, the sales volume of forklift mobile robots (with visual navigation) in China is 5,000 units in 2020, which means the market penetration rate of the traditional AMR is less than 1%.

Mr. Hu Xiaobo said that the current low market penetration rate of the traditional AGV has three main reasons.

The first is the navigation technology that cannot keep up with changes in demand. At present, the navigation methods of traditional AMR mainly include QR code navigation, LiDAR reflector navigation, visual SLAM navigation and 2D SLAM natural navigation. Mr. Hu mentioned that the QR code and reflector mainly rely on markers and are only suitable for simple indoor operation scenarios, which require complex infrastructure construction with large limitation in application. As a result, those solutions couldn't meet the most requirements of customers in personalized storage and material handling. Although natural navigation has the high flexibility and site adaptability, its high technical threshold keeps the development slowly.

The second is high-cost input. Compared with manual operation, AGV can work 7×24 hours, which is obviously more efficient. But in reality, the current cost of laser reflector navigation system for traditional AGV is still relatively high. “Especially for imported systems, coupled with the cost of forklifts, the expense generally reaches hundreds of thousands, which is quite high to some companies." Mr. Hu said.

The third is complicated deployment. Take the solution of a factory as an example, it is a hard task to deploy more than twenty AMRs. It is impossible to install reflectors on all walls due to the reason of cost and sites limitation. In the later installation, 4G/5G signals, communication links and other technologies must also be taken into consideration. Therefore, the deployment cycle may be as long as half a year or even a year, while the corresponding material costs and labor costs will continue to increase.

Mr. Hu said that it is because of the existence of these three reasons that the current penetration rate of AGV remains so low. In response to these pain points, although relevant solutions have been proposed in the industry, they have never been to the point. "In natural navigation solutions, the current visual SLAM and 2D SLAM technologies are not much different from the past laser navigation reflectors, which perform not well both indoors and outdoors. And the map is no longer usable after even just a little change in the environment."

Launch of the 3D Lidar SLAM AGV Solution

Based on the current deficiencies of various AGV navigation solutions, LeiShen Intelligent has innovatively launched the 3D Lidar SLAM AGV Solution to fill the gap in the market and promote the forklift industry to an unmanned and intelligent transformation. According to Mr. Hu, this Solution is specifically proposed for coping with the three major pain points, which also reflects LeiShen Intelligent's precise perception of the market demand. The main advantages of this program are as follows:

The world's leading 3D perception capability. The 3D Lidar SLAM AGV Solution takes 360° multi-line lidars (16/32 lines) presented by the LeiShen Intelligent as the core sensor. The vehicle’s maximum effective sensing range reaches up to 200 meters, and the body is supplemented with anti-collision lidar for safety protection. Meanwhile, a camera and an Inertial Measurement Unit (IMU) are also integrated into the solution. Through the fusion of multi-sensor data, and based on the world-leading 3D lidar SLAM algorithm of the LeiShen Intelligent, the stability of the forklift's perception is greatly improved. Thus, functions like accurate 3D scene map construction, matching positioning, route planning, real-time navigation and obstacle avoidance can be realized, and the perceived environmental information features are rich, the positioning matching is stable. Therefore, the solution is suitable for more than 99% of complex indoor and outdoor environments, which lays a solid foundation for large-scale promotion.

Low cost and high performance. High cost has always been a pain point in the industry. For this, LeiShen Intelligent adjusted its core technology and scientific production management, which greatly reduced the cost of lidar applications. Thanks to all the efforts, LeiShen Intelligent has also become one of the few companies on the market that achieved significant cost reduction. According to Mr. Hu Xiaobo, the 3D Lidar SLAM AGV Solution is not only equipped with a collision warning system, but also equipped with core components such as a high-performance processor, a dispatching system, a low-level control module, and a software development interface, which perfectly realize the combination functions of perception, mapping, matching and positioning of the AGV working environment. What values the most is that the entire solution is high-quality but inexpensive. The cost of the whole package is only one-third of the reflector lidar solution, and it is expected to be lower in the future. This will also accelerate the promotion and implementation of the 3D Lidar SLAM AGV Solution, and realize large-scale application.

Multi-machine scheduling doubles deployment efficiency. Compared with the traditional AGV navigation solutions, LeiShen intelligent’s 3D Lidar SLAM AGV Solution is undoubtedly more flexible and adaptable to the multi-machine scheduling system. It takes only one unmanned forklift to complete the map construction of the work scene, and then the work achievement can be shared with other forklifts. According to the storage and layout of the goods in the factory, users can reasonably plan the operation scheduling to easily realize the efficient operation of multiple unmanned forklifts at the same time. Mr. Hu noted that this 3D Lidar SLAM AGV Solution is of high efficiency, and less than 10 units of 3D lidars SLAM AGVs can be deployed in two days.

Mr. Hu said LeiShen Intelligent has truly integrated the 3D lidar SLAM algorithm into the entire system solution. With lidar, software scheduling, algorithms and many other features, this solution can really subvert the industry!

The achievements of LeiShen Intelligent’s 3D Lidar SLAM

LeiShen Intelligent has placed high hope on the " 3D Lidar SLAM AGV Solution", which in return also lived up to the expectations and achieved excellent results.

In 2019, when the 3D Lidar SLAM AGV Solution was just launched, it won a billion-dollar order from a famous foreign forklift manufacturer. In 2021, this solution has been upgraded again, bringing the navigation accuracy to a millimeter level and providing more precise environmental information perception.

Mr. Hu said at present, there are nearly 200 companies that have reached out to LeiShen Intelligent and quoted for the 3D SLAM AGV Solution, including ontology manufacturers, solution integrators, and so on.

In addition, according to Mr. Hu, LeiShen Intelligent has also introduced different sales and service options for different clients. For example, for ontology manufacturers (including AGV ontology manufacturers and traditional forklift manufacturers), according to their needs, LeiShen can provide 3D lidar hardware products or a complete set of AGV automation transformation solutions to help ontology manufacturers complete their intelligent product upgrades. As to solution integrator, LeiShen Intelligent can also provide lidar products and software algorithm modules to assist in scheduling and form a perfectly adapted integrated solution.

At last, Mr. Hu Xiaobo said there are still companies that are currently on the sidelines of 3D SLAM technology, and some companies are even in the "learning" stage. The market share is far from rising. In this process, LeiShen Intelligent will take continuous efforts to deepen researches on this technology and empower more industry customers. At present, the 3D Lidar SLAM AGV Solution has been applied in many industries on a small scale and has been recognized by many well-known customers. The company is confident that the market demand for AGV will surge in the next few years and lead the industry development.

Conclusion: 2D SLAM fades before it gets old, and the future of 3D SLAM has already come. In the current mobile robot market, the speed of technology updates and iterations is accelerating. Whether LeiShen Intelligent’s 3D Lidar SLAM AGV Solution can promote industry changes, the market will give us an answer.

About LeiShen Intelligent

Shenzhen LeiShen Intelligent System Co., Ltd. is a world-leading lidar and solution provider. Awarded the Second Prize of National Science and Technology Progress Award, this national high-tech enterprise is also a winner of the AI Industry Innovation Key Tasks and the only lidar engineering technology research center in Guangdong Province which integrates production, research and marketing. Headquartered in Shenzhen, China, the company owns 3 factories, 12 offices and 6 overseas agents. Committed to empowering industrial upgrading with high-end, stable and reliable lidar environment sensing technology, the company provides services covering nine major industrial ecosystems, namely, autonomous driving, smart transportation, rail transit, robotics, logistics, surveying and mapping, security, ports and industrial automation.