On October 29th, SZYY robot announced that it had received millions of dollars in Pre-A round of financing.
Founded in 2018, SZYY robot mainly develops muscle outer armor products to serve people with mobility impairments, including middle-aged and elderly patients and stroke patients. This round of financing is mainly used to develop and iterate muscle outer armor products, promote localization of parts and components, conduct clinical tests in multiple medical institutions, apply for Class II medical device certification, and market expansion.
SZYY robot said that they are preparing for clinical testing with a number of top three hospitals. After the first product goes on the market, it will be provided to B-end customers such as hospitals and rehabilitation institutions to provide scientific, accurate and personalized gait assessment and training solutions for stroke patients in the recovery period. In the future, they will deploy the B-side and C-side at the same time to provide help for people with mobility impairments at home and fill the gap in the market.
At present, muscle outer armor can be used in many scenes such as industry, military, medical, outdoor, etc. The reason why Yrobot prefers the medical field is mainly because of its large number of users and urgent needs.
SZYY founder and CEO Ding Ye told Hay Think that there are 13 million stroke patients in China and 9 million people with lower limb mobility impairments. Due to living habits and other factors, China will add about 2 million stroke patients every year. For these patients, hospitals often lack effective active training methods, accurate real-time training data feedback and rehabilitation evaluation standards, and insufficient medical staff to accompany patients in real-time training. If the patient wants to train at home, the rehabilitation training equipment on the market is too heavy, too expensive, and too large. It needs to be supported by crutches, walkers, sliding stents, and even a few doctors before it can be used in a wide area. In addition to stroke patients, the number of middle-aged and elderly people with muscle atrophy and limited mobility is also increasing. Currently, there are 230 million elderly people in China, of which 21 million are using mobility products, including canes and walkers.
To solve these problems, SZYY robot has developed a more flexible, lighter, and smarter muscle outer armor system. The system combines artificial intelligence algorithms, robotics, flexible material design, human biomechanics, and predicts the wearer's action intention through machine learning. It can make the muscles and outer armor highly coordinate with the body, helping users to complete body movements more stably, easily and accurately.
Currently, the wearable robots on the market for rehabilitation are mainly "exoskeleton robots". However, the exoskeleton robot provides a "passive" training method that allows the patient to walk slowly according to the established movement trajectory of the device. Moreover, the patient is fixed on a heavy rigid support, which makes it difficult to maintain balance and stability, and requires additional support equipment such as crutches to assist walking.
The muscle outer armour developed by Yrobot is to allow the machine to try to understand what the patient wants to do, and then use the power of the machine to help the patient complete the exercise that cannot be achieved. Through feedback adjustment, the patient can play more initiative in the training. This is of great significance to the patient's "cortical function remodeling", and "cortical function remodeling" is a key step for stroke patients to restore normal movement control in stroke patients. It means that previously damaged nerve pathways are supplemented by newly formed pathways, which allows better muscle movement and movement control.
Speaking of competitive advantages and technical barriers, Ding Ye mentioned that in terms of hardware design, its muscle outer armor has greatly reduced the weight of the equipment (only 2.5 kg) through lightweight bionic carbon fiber brackets and extremely high-power-density driving devices. In terms of software algorithms, their team is good at human-computer interaction control algorithms, and the muscle outer armor equipment needs to predict human actions and postures on the millisecond time scale, and needs to be stably out of sync at the most suitable time Of patients provide precise muscle assistance.
About SZYY Robot
SZYY is a new wearable robot company founded by Harvard University, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Tsinghua University with Ph.Ds and masters in Boston, USA in 2018, and stopped to develop in China.
Ding, the founder and CEO of SZYY, also has a Ph.D. in Engineering Science from Harvard University. During his studies at Harvard University, Dr. Ding specialized in motion-assisted robotics. The relevant research results were published in the robotics journal of Science, JNER, TNSRE, ICRA, ICORR, IROS Related researches have been cited more than 1,200 times in top academic journals. The core team is composed of a number of PhDs and masters from Harvard, MIT and other universities, as well as a team of top engineers who have been deeply involved in the industry for decades.