1.product introduction 

R-Storm is a technologically innovative company focusing on robot design and development, manufacturing and related derivative services. R-Storm's high-altitude glass curtain wall cleaning robot adopts bionic technology, which has the significant advantages of high cleaning efficiency, strong safety, and high technical barriers. At present, the company has independently developed and launched two high-altitude cleaning robot products, including suction cup adsorption and snake-shaped wind multi-purpose robots.

The suction cup robot crawls autonomously (non-steel cable dragging motion), adopts the principle of multi-leg adsorption (maximum load can reach 100kg), minimizes the impact of high-rise wind, the product has a wide range of applications, and has strong future function ductility. The product is equipped with two cleaning methods, roller brush, medium pressure water spray cleaning system and steam, hanging brush cleaning system, the maximum cleaning efficiency is about 500 square meters / hour, and the cleaning speed is 5 times that of manual cleaning. At the same time, this product is equipped with a variety of safety protection systems, including safety ropes, emergency full suction cup adsorption waiting rescue system, multiple sets of sensor real-time monitoring system, leg independent control system (single leg failure does not affect the overall movement of the machine), strong adsorption capacity (It can resist the influence of wind from a 300-meter-high building), etc., to ensure the safety of the robot during operation.

The snake-shaped wind multi-purpose cleaning robot can effectively solve the two technical application difficulties of complex obstacles and different wall materials in the market. This series of products has 3 utility model patents and 3 invention patents. Its maximum cleaning efficiency is about 1500 square meters per hour, and the cleaning speed is 20 times that of manual cleaning. At the same time, the product is equipped with safety ropes, multiple sets of wind detection sensors, independent control of propellers, real-time monitoring and other safety assurance systems to maximize the guarantee. Safety during work.

2.Product advantages 

The intelligent cleaning robot developed by R-Storm has the following four core advantages:

Precise positioning: A variety of feedback systems can accurately locate the machine, and the grid network method positioning system is independently developed. The positioning accuracy can reach the centimeter level, which maximizes the safety of cleaning operations. This set of precise positioning system has applied for two utility model and invention patents.

Cleaning detection: Use machine learning technology and image recognition technology to identify the stains on the cleaning surface in real time, and automatically adjust the cleaning position and time to ensure cleaning quality.

Multiple applicable scenarios: At the beginning of the design, the mobile solution of autonomous crawling was selected, so that the product has strong adaptability and can work in a variety of scenarios.

Ultra-high efficiency: Efficient cleaning and moving methods ensure the extremely high operating efficiency of R-Storm products. At present, the cleaning area of the product can reach 8 square meters per minute.

The product carries the three wires of water and electricity and can work continuously and uninterruptedly. One product can replace 5-10 cleaning workers, the suction cup robot can clean 2-3 times faster than other competitors, and the snake-shaped robot is 10 times faster than other competitors.

3.Market analysis 

R-Storm's products can be widely used in the cleaning and maintenance of high-altitude glass curtain walls, high-speed rail outer wall cleaning, photovoltaic solar energy cleaning, and high-altitude special environmental testing and other scenarios. At present, the global high-altitude glass curtain wall area is about 3 billion square meters, and the annual industry valuation can reach 20 billion yuan. China's high-altitude glass curtain wall area reaches 2.5 billion square meters, accounting for 85% of the global total, and continues to grow at a rate of 90 million square meters every year. There are more than 5,000 companies specializing in curtain wall cleaning services in first-tier cities across the country, with an annual industry valuation of about 8 billion yuan. In the United States, aerial cleaning is a commercial service within the cleaning industry. The area of the high-altitude glass curtain wall in the United States reaches 175 million square meters, accounting for 6% of the total area of the global high-altitude glass curtain wall, and the annual output value is about 2 billion yuan.

With tens of millions of Pre-A rounds of financing, "R-storm" wants to accelerate the landing of high-altitude cleaning robots

36Kr was informed that R-storm received tens of millions of Pre-A round of financing, and the investor in this round is Guohong Jiaxin Capital. This round of funds will be mainly used for marketing and next-generation product development.

China's current building exterior wall area is 50 billion square meters, of which curtain wall buildings account for 5%, reaching 2.5 billion square meters. The cleaning of these high-altitude curtain walls has always been done manually, with high risks and high labor costs. It is also increasingly difficult for cleaning companies to recruit workers. Machines have become a trend in the high-altitude curtain wall cleaning industry.

R-storm is a supplier of aerial work robot products and services, aiming to solve the industry pain points of high risk, low efficiency and high cost in special scenarios.

In 2017, 36kr reported to the company that the robot developed at that time was a circular multi-legged robot. After it was put into the market, it was found that the cleaning company's demand for high-altitude cleaning robots mainly included cleaning efficiency, weight, multi-material adaptability, and obstacle crossing. There are high requirements in several aspects such as ability.

Cleaning efficiency is the number one factor that customers care about. At present, most of the products on the market can only achieve a cleaning speed of 400 square meters to 500 square meters per hour, replacing 6-8 manual workers, which cannot fully meet customer needs. Therefore, the current cleaning robot developed and produced by R-storm adopts wheeled movement, and the cleaning speed can reach 1500 square meters per hour, realizing the workload of replacing 15-20 "spidermen" with a single robot.

Yao Dongwei, founder and general manager of the company, told 36kr that high-altitude curtain wall cleaning will encounter many obstacles. For example, many window frames have a certain height, and the robot needs to climb over these window frames during the cleaning process. In addition, some high-rise buildings are special-shaped wall structures, which make the robot have good leaping ability.

In order to better cross obstacles, R-storm abandoned the previous circular multi-legged shape in terms of shape, and bionic snake's motion principle in terms of movement ability, and adopted a multi-section modular snake shape. At the same time, at the software algorithm level , R-storm has independently developed an adaptive obstacle crossing algorithm. The robot can autonomously identify obstacles of different heights and choose the appropriate crossing path and method. At present, the R-storm robot can achieve unlimited crossing of obstacles.

The material of the high-altitude curtain wall is not only glass. Sometimes the exterior wall of a high-rise building uses multiple materials at the same time. Robots must have strong adsorption capacity when facing glass, stone and metal surfaces. For this reason, unlike Shihe Technology's robot technology, which adopts a magnetic adsorption method based on super-strong magnetic materials, and Yingxing Intelligent adopts a suspension suction cup type, R-storm adopts a wind adsorption method, and the whole adopts a semi-enclosed culvert. The design of the power system generates thrust and also forms a low pressure inside the machine. The pressure difference will make the robot stick to the working surface, so as to ensure that the robot can move stably and safely on high-altitude walls of various materials.

This adsorption method, Yao Dongwei used an image analogy, the R-storm robot is equivalent to the drone flying on the wall, and the wheel of the robot just presses against the wall to achieve a force balance.

When aiming at super high-rise buildings, the interference factors such as high-altitude cross wind are strengthened, and the surface of super high-rise buildings is smoother. Therefore, R-storm adopts the suction cup adsorption method for super high-rise buildings, and uses a new material at the bottom to make the robot Can move quickly on smooth super high-rise exterior walls.

These two adsorption methods also allow the R-storm robot to move back and forth horizontally instead of the traditional vertical movement, which minimizes repeated movements and secondary clean sewage pollution.

R-storm has also made corresponding improvements in the weight of the robot. The weight of a single section of the robot is less than 10kg, and the weight of multiple sections is about 15kg-20kg. In addition, R-storm has carried out redundant design in both wind adsorption and suction cup adsorption. For example, the adsorption capacity of the 2-section robot can fully bear the weight of the 4-section robot, so as to ensure the safety of the robot operation.

Yao Dongwei said that the use of cleaning robots can help cleaning companies to change their employment methods, improve cleaning efficiency, expand sales scale and increase their profit margins. Therefore, R-storm is currently not only directly promoting terminal property companies, but also providing cleaning companies. Robot rental Services, both parties share the cleaning benefits.

In addition to covering the field of high-altitude curtain wall cleaning, R-storm also actively expands other operating scenarios, such as solar panel cleaning in the photovoltaic industry, and high-altitude cleaning and testing in the industrial field. In the future, the company will build a mobile platform on the facade space.

In terms of business progress, R-storm has begun to deploy more than ten robots this year, and is about to complete the customer acceptance stage. It is expected that after the official launch of sales next year, the number of sales will reach the level of 100 units, and the income will reach the level of tens of millions.。

On the high-altitude cleaning robot track, 3kr also reported on companies such as Black Ant Brothers, Shihe Technology, Yingxing Intelligence, etc. Shihe Technology is mainly applied in shipping, thermal power, chemical, construction and other industries, mainly for ship rust removal, chemical tank Weld grinding, thermal power boiler water wall maintenance and other industrial scenarios.