Founder of surertech : Song Wenhua

Interview & Article | Zhang Xue

Editor | Shi Run

Visual Design | Mao Ying

With the Advent of the Intelligent Driving Era, LiDAR Technology Gains Industry Attention as the Midterm

Mainstream Technology for Autonomous Vehicles; Samsung, Huawei, DJI Automotive, and Others Enter the Fray

Data from market research firm Yole Development shows that the LiDAR market will grow at a rate of 113% between 2020 and 2026, with the market size expected to reach 1.7 billion US dollars (approximately 110 million yuan) by 2026. The commercial application prospects of LiDAR are broad.

In 2021, Dr. Song Wenhua, a graduate of Nanjing University of Science and Technology who has been deeply engaged in the LiDAR field for more than a decade, officially established and operated Nanjing Shuwei Intelligent Technology Co., Ltd., which is committed to becoming a provider of cost-effective LiDAR and overall solutions for low-speed autonomous driving technology.

Whether it is team building, product R&D, implementation of mass production, or completion of a ten-million-level angel round of financing, Shuwei Intelligent is advancing at a relatively fast pace. In an exclusive interview with Maker Commune, Song Wenhua revealed that the company’s current order value has exceeded ten million yuan, and it will complete a multi-ten-million-level Pre-A round of financing by mid-August. After all products of 2021 are delivered, the company’s revenue is expected to exceed 25 million yuan.

Looking back on the company’s relatively fast and smooth development over the past six months, Song Wenhua frankly stated that entrepreneurship requires accumulation in various aspects such as capital, talents, and technology; entrepreneurship relying solely on an idea and an impulse is difficult to succeed. “The entrepreneurial process of Shuwei Intelligent is like playing a chess game with a ‘well-thought-out plan’,” and the situation is unfolding gradually as Song Wenhua envisioned.

Every "Effective Move" Taken Before Entrepreneurship

Since his university days, Song Wenhua has forged a connection with LiDAR. In 2007, he enrolled in the major of Optical Information Science and Technology at Nanjing University of Science and Technology. During his junior year, he chose LiDAR as the topic for his graduation thesis. In 2010, he received a "postgraduate recommendation offer" for the major of Materials Science from a top university in China. Driven by a strong interest in continuing his research on LiDAR, he gave up this opportunity to be recommended for postgraduate studies at another university and instead chose to stay at his alma mater, pursuing master’s and doctoral degrees in LiDAR at the Department of Optical Engineering through the postgraduate recommendation program.

 

During This Period, a Military "Model" Project He Participated in Completing Won the First Prize of the National Science and Technology Progress Award in 2019. His over a decade of exploration in military LiDAR has yielded a perfect result.

As is widely known, military "model" projects imply extremely high requirements. "In a project, if problems arise in a certain batch of tests, it means all existing achievements need to be reset to zero. We have to scrap all results, start over to identify the cause, write a report, and only resume work after finding the root cause."

For researchers, resetting all research achievements to zero is an extremely terrifying prospect. However, when problems occur in product R&D, there must be no luck or perfunctory handling to move directly to the next step. Therefore, "strictly controlling the R&D process, having the patience and perseverance to start over at any time, and being responsible for the results" has become Song Wenhua’s inherent requirement for himself and the company’s R&D team.

Unlike ordinary laboratory projects, Song Wenhua’s postgraduate career placed great emphasis on "mass production and implementation." This made him realize early on that "when laboratory-developed products are transferred to factories for production, a set of standardized, modular, and replicable operation plans must be delivered to workers. Only in this way can the reliability of products be guaranteed to the greatest extent and the yield rate of mass production be improved."

His experience of deeply participating in military projects and ultimately achieving results not only enabled Song Wenhua to accumulate solid technical capabilities but also shaped his rigorous work style. However, the maturity of his entrepreneurial idea was also inseparable from his work experience at a startup. Since 2019, Song Wenhua has served as the Chief Technology Officer (CTO) at a startup, witnessing the company grow from just a few people to nearly a hundred and personally experiencing the company’s management crises. This experience also made Song Wenhua understand that as a team founder, he needs to be highly responsible for the team: not only must he maintain a good mental state himself, but more importantly, he should continuously learn and improve his management capabilities as the company grows.

Surertech R&D Team

Entrepreneurship Is Not a Solo Battle; You Need to Find the Most Capable Partners to Enhance the Team’s Overall Strength”

The core members of Song Wenhua’s entrepreneurial team possess capabilities covering multiple areas such as technology, management, and capital. Most of them have already achieved modest success in their respective fields, yet they all gave up their current "stability" and "prosperity" to trust and join Shuwei Intelligent.

This not only makes Song Wenhua deeply aware of his heavy responsibilities but also boosts his confidence. In the early stage of the company, investment was substantial, and facing a capital shortage, Song Wenhua even sold his house at a low price, solely to ensure the normal payment of the team’s salaries. Once funds were in place, Song Wenhua began "recruiting more talents" again: "Come join us; let’s work together!"

Technology Deployment, Market Priority

"New products can bring boundless imagination to life. The reason I started a business is to implement technology and enhance everyone’s life experience."

Undoubtedly, in the field of LiDAR, the development of military technology is far ahead of commercial applications. In 2016, when domestic researchers in the autonomous driving field were still conducting research on laser sensors, the laboratory where Song Wenhua worked had already developed a multi-line LiDAR for vehicle autonomous driving. Years of military research experience have equipped Song Wenhua with sufficient technical capabilities. But how to "deploy" the advanced technologies he has mastered to the field of social life and bring more convenient and better experiences to people?

First, he considered the possibility of using a cost-effective TOF LiDAR solution in cleaning robots.

For the navigation of cleaning robots, triangulation ranging is currently widely used. "This method offers high precision at short distances, but as the distance increases, the measurement accuracy deteriorates significantly." In contrast, "TOF LiDAR" uses time-of-flight ranging, and its measurement accuracy does not change noticeably with increasing distance; relatively speaking, it has high precision for long-distance measurements.

Furthermore, due to limitations in its working principle, triangulation LiDAR must be exposed and rotate externally. This makes the product extremely vulnerable in terms of dust and water resistance—during long-term use, it tends to accumulate dust or other impurities, and the rotating motor is also prone to damage from entanglement with hair, threads, or similar objects. By comparison, TOF LiDAR adopts a fully enclosed design, which provides superior protection and a longer service life.

 

SL-30 LiDAR for Service Robots

Exploded View of SL-30 LiDAR

However, the limitation of the commercial application of the TOF LiDAR solution lies in its relatively high cost. "The cost of short-range triangulation LiDAR is around a few hundred yuan, while the price of high-quality TOF LiDAR often reaches several thousand yuan or even tens of thousands of yuan." Based on his understanding of technology and accumulated mass production experience, Song Wenhua clearly knows which parts can be optimized for cost when adapting the TOF LiDAR technology solution to cleaning robots—without excessively reducing technical indicators. "Shuwei Intelligent’s accumulated technical expertise in software algorithms has also contributed to the final cost control."

Coupled with the improvement of China’s domestic supply chain system, the cost of many mature domestic spare parts that meet performance indicators has dropped sharply. In the end, the LiDAR developed by Shuwei Intelligent for cleaning robots has achieved a "double surpass" over existing general solutions in terms of both technical indicators and cost.

Cleaning Robots Equipped with Shuwei Intelligent’s SL-80 LiDAR in On-Site Use

In this regard, Chen Donghua, Partner of Ralph Venture Capital (the angel round investor of Shuwei Intelligent), stated: "Shuwei Intelligent has impressed us with both its technical depth and market development capabilities in the LiDAR industry. Ultimately, new technologies rely on industrialization and implementation—only through mass production and large-scale application can we avoid the situation where 'technically advanced solutions are too esoteric to be widely adopted,' alleviate the issue of excessively high costs for customers to apply LiDAR, and provide customers with cost-effective LiDAR products and industry-specific solutions."

Empower the Downstream, Adhere to the Midstream Position

Building on his expertise in the LiDAR field, Song Wenhua has positioned Shuwei Intelligent as a midstream industrial company and aims to be the best in the midstream segment. "The downstream market has far more room for innovation than we do. As a midstream manufacturer, what Shuwei Intelligent needs to do is achieve extreme cost-effectiveness, so that downstream manufacturers can use our products with confidence and be empowered to accelerate the takeoff of downstream market applications."

"If we sell 100 LiDAR units a year at 100,000 yuan each, our company will not achieve any growth. However, if we sell each unit at 100 yuan and move 100,000 units annually, it will be of great significance for the company itself, the market, and the development of downstream industries."

Guided by the development philosophy of "Focusing on Industry and Prioritizing Implementation," Shuwei Intelligent is becoming a high-quality project in the eyes of investors and has also helped itself secure more new opportunities. On June 21, 2021, at the Nanjing · Artificial Intelligence Session 2 of the roadshow for the 7th "i Chuang Cup" Internet Innovation and Entrepreneurship Competition, Shuwei Intelligent directly qualified for the finals. It is understood that after the competition, Song Wenhua successively received communication intentions from nearly 30 investment institutions, and many potential customers also took the initiative to contact the company. He revealed that the company has begun to cooperate with some of these customers in initial collaboration, and is expected to expand into multiple new markets with broad prospects.

Shuwei Intelligent Secures a Final Pass Card at the Roadshow of the 7th "i Chuang Cup" Internet Innovation and Entrepreneurship Competition

Song Wenhua Believes That Actively Seeking Cooperation, Rather Than "Competition," Is What "Shuwei Intelligent" Should Prioritize Currently."The LiDAR application market is large enough, and we are still far from the stage of competing with others for a share of the pie. It will take a considerable amount of time to develop, expand, and even mature each segmented field of LiDAR applications."

According to Song Wenhua, up to now, the company is in the process of fulfilling a LiDAR order of hundreds of thousands of units signed with a listed company. "Many downstream manufacturers have an urgent demand for our products," which is also a relatively pressure-filled matter for Song Wenhua.

Song Wenhua stated that Shuwei Intelligent has now completed the construction of its LiDAR production line, with a daily production capacity of approximately 1,000 units. The company is already capable of providing core technical support, such as robotic LiDAR systems and solutions, to dozens of cooperative partners. At the same time, benefiting from the efficiency advantages of Shuwei Intelligent’s automated LiDAR production line, the price of mid-to-high-end LiDAR used in service robots has also dropped to the level of a few hundred yuan.

When talking about the company’s future development, Song Wenhua said that the core of the company’s future development is to provide cost-effective micro high-precision LiDAR series products and their solutions for customers in scenarios such as commercial cleaning robots, industrial robots, household sweeping robots, drones, AGVs (Automated Guided Vehicles), industrial distance measurement, and smart home appliances.