Legendrobot (领鹊科技), a construction robot developer, today announced a Series A+ round of financing valued at tens of millions of US dollars, led by XVC, with participation from existing shareholder Atypical Ventures.
Proceeds raised in this round will be used for the R&D, production and marketing of robotic products.
Legendrobot closed an angel funding round worth several million US dollars from Atypical Ventures in March 2021.
Almost a year later, it raised close to 100 million yuan (US$14.38 million) in a Series A round, led by IDG Capital, followed by Atypical Ventures.
Founded in 2021 in Nanjing, the provincial capital of Jiangsu Province, Legendrobot is committed to building robots tailored to construction and decoration.
Currently, its robots cover the paintwork, flooring and high-precision automated execution of the decoration process.
Its putty and emulsion paint spraying and floor sanding robots have achieved commercial applications in 20 projects in Nanjing and neighboring cities, totaling a floor space of 1 million sqm under construction in 2022.
Since construction and decoration involves a long list of procedures, making it hard for human workers to ensure quality and efficiency of the job, robotics can make a difference, said Zhang Zhixiang, founder and CEO of Legendrobot.
He told 36kr, a Chinese tech media outlet, that the core value of the startup’s construction robots lies in “fully automated construction” as well as “adaptability to complex scenarios.”
Legendrobot supplies full-stack technological solutions capable of construction task planning, position sensing, decision-making, autonomous navigation and processing, to cope with a series of complicated use cases.
The company stands out for its real-time 3D point cloud measuring, self-developed anti-jamming positioning algorithms, self-designed suspension and wheel systems, and motion control algorithms for the robotic chassis.
Once an operator connects with the robot via a tablet at a construction site, he or she can issue commands for the robot to follow. It is then able to complete all the tasks designated for a single floor on its own.
The operator only needs to guide the robot to move across different floors and replenish raw materials like powder putty or paint or charge the built-in batteries.
According to Zhang, the founder, construction robotics in the future will develop in three phases, starting with being usable to being leasable and finally to being sellable.
This transition is due to the high upfront costs that inhibit one-off purchase on a large scale.
Therefore, leasing will likely be a temporary practice during the evolution of construction robots. Going forward, the bulk of revenue for most construction robotics firms will come from product sales.
Legendrobot began to trial the leasing model in January this year, following mass deployment of its solutions last year. The startup has signed leasing contracts and will go on to drive sales. It is projected to sell more than 100 units of robot next year, and has plans to take its operation global.
