Hardcore New Releases: How Far Have Robots Evolved? | Yunqi Capital

The evolution of embodied intelligence is bringing general-purpose robots from science fiction closer to reality. And before that future fully arrives, robots have already quietly found their way into everyday life.

Over its ten-year history, Yunqi Capital has been deeply rooted in technology, with robotics as one of its long-term focus areas. In late April, Yunqi Capital's angel-round portfolio company Astribot unveiled its first self-developed AI robot, the Astribot S1. In the past two weeks, three more early-stage investments — Keenon Robotics, RealMan, and Coohom — have made successive appearances at major industry exhibitions, showcasing new developments in robotics technology.

This edition of Yunqi Capital takes you through the latest from these three companies.

01 Keenon Robotics x CHCC

From May 17 to 19, at CHCC 2024 (the 25th National Hospital Construction Conference & International Hospital Construction, Equipment and Management Exhibition), a major event in the healthcare industry, Keenon Medical presented its next-generation Gen 2 products.

Among them, the standard M1 Series robot features multi-robot collaborative operation capabilities, enabling agile navigation through crowds. Enhanced by AI algorithms, its navigation and obstacle avoidance are more flexible and autonomous. The all-in-one delivery robot X202, with its extra-large load capacity and quick-swap cabinet system, drew considerable attention from attendees, who gathered to discuss future applications for medical delivery robots. In addition, Keenon Medical showcased its full range of flagship products and digital intelligent hospital solutions.

Founded in 2010, Keenon Robotics is a globally renowned service robotics company; Yunqi Capital led its Series A in 2016. As the pioneer of global food delivery robots, Keenon Robotics is now expanding into diversified large-scale application scenarios, including healthcare.

02 Coohom x IEEE

International Conference on Robotics and Automation

From May 13 to 17, Coohom Cloud made its appearance at ICRA 2024, the IEEE International Conference on Robotics and Automation held in Yokohama, Japan. The conference is one of the most influential international academic gatherings in robotics technology. Coohom Cloud showcased its cutting-edge data processing and generation capabilities, offering researchers in robotics, AIGC, XR, and other fields a complete suite of customized data delivery solutions.

Robotics R&D demands massive amounts of training data, yet acquiring real-world data is prohibitively expensive. Synthetic data can generate diverse scenarios to serve as a cost-effective alternative. During the exhibition, numerous exhibitors noted that Coohom Cloud's indoor dataset products, featuring photorealistic rendering and physical realism, are advancing research and applications in robotic visual perception, human-robot interaction, and simulation testing. These solutions help companies train robots' spatial scene cognition capabilities and improve the accuracy of intelligent task execution.

Coohom is a leading interior design platform; Yunqi Capital participated in its Series B in 2014. Riding the AI wave, Coohom has actively embraced technological transformation. Coohom Cloud is a PaaS platform built on Coohom's vast repository of indoor 3D virtual scene data and technical research, providing robotics and AIGC companies with efficient, low-cost, privacy-preserving high-quality synthetic data solutions.

03 RealMan x AUTOMATE

From May 6 to 9, RealMan made its appearance at AUTOMATE, one of the world's largest industrial automation exhibitions (the Automation Technology & Robotics Show in the US), demonstrating multiple breakthroughs and product innovations centered on its ultra-lightweight humanoid robotic arm. Among these, an AI physiotherapy robot became a focal point for attendees. This robot integrates flexible robotic arms, 3D human body visual tracking, deep learning, and force sensing — all grounded in traditional Chinese medicine theory — achieving an integrated "hand-eye-brain" system that combines classical TCM acupoint therapy with AI.

Additionally, RealMan showcased its latest achievements in AI — RealEye (RE), an AI product that combines the full workflow of intelligent robotic arm data collection, annotation, recognition, localization, grasping operations, and deployment. Its intelligent algorithms paired with robotic arm hardware enable recognition, localization, and grasping of a wide variety of objects.

RealMan is the world's first company to develop ultra-lightweight humanoid robotic arms; Yunqi Capital was the sole investor in its Series A in 2022. RealMan has now launched multiple humanoid robotic arm products. The GEN72, introduced this January, has significantly improved arm affordability with its sub-1,000-yuan price point, helping robotic products penetrate deeper into diverse industries and everyday life.