Yimu Tech, a Chinese developer specializing in tactile sensing for embodied intelligence, has successfully closed its Series E funding round, securing over RMB 1 billion. This significant investment, backed by leading RMB and USD funds as well as industrial partners, elevates the company's valuation to more than RMB 10 billion. The new capital is earmarked for advancing research and development and scaling up mass production to meet growing order demands.
Bridging the Gap in Embodied Intelligence
The robotics industry has long focused on hardware and AI models, creating a bottleneck where robots can reason but not effectively interact with their environment. Yimu Tech addresses this critical gap by pioneering advanced tactile sensing, a fundamental requirement for all robotics applications. This focus on physical AI provides the missing link for creating truly capable and dexterous machines.
The company's proprietary bionic visuo-tactile sensors function by capturing microscopic deformations on a contact surface with a miniature optical system. An AI algorithm then processes this visual data in real-time to calculate multi-dimensional force information, including pressure, shear force, and texture. This innovative method translates physical touch into structured data, enabling a seamless connection between the physical world and intelligent systems.
Breakthroughs in Sensor Design and Performance
Yimu Tech has achieved a significant engineering milestone by developing the world's thinnest mass-producible bionic visuo-tactile sensor, with a thickness of less than 3 millimeters. This ultra-thin profile overcomes a common industry challenge, allowing for integration into compact spaces like robotic dexterous hands. The sensor's core specifications are equally impressive, boasting a resolution of over 10,000 points and milligram-level force accuracy.
Further performance metrics include a force resolution of 0.005N and an industrial-grade lifespan exceeding one million presses, demonstrating exceptional durability. With 90% of its core tactile indicators reaching human-like levels, the technology empowers robots to perform delicate tasks with unprecedented precision. This advancement is a crucial step toward creating more sophisticated and reliable robotic systems for various applications.
A Comprehensive Three-Layered Architecture
Beyond the hardware, Yimu Tech has developed a sophisticated three-layer architecture of "data-algorithm-model" to transform touch into a usable robotic capability. The first layer focuses on data acquisition and building standardized datasets by integrating with mainstream collection technologies. This system records tactile feedback during real-world tasks, effectively creating a high-quality tactile learning library for robots.
The second layer features a proprietary Tactile Transformer Encoder algorithm that acts as a universal translator for tactile signals. It extracts key information about an object's properties, such as texture and hardness, from raw sensor data. This information is then converted into a universal code, ensuring that any robot's strategy model can understand and use it, regardless of the underlying hardware.
At the third layer, the system facilitates multimodal embodied AI model training, fusing the encoded tactile data with visual and language inputs. This integration fills the long-standing sensory gap in complex task execution, enabling the development of a complete model that can perceive, decide, and act. The result is a robot that operates with significantly greater precision and reliability in real-world environments.
This latest funding round positions Yimu Tech to accelerate its mission of revolutionizing robotic interaction and physical AI. By offering a complete solution that combines state-of-the-art hardware with an evolving software ecosystem, the company is set to unlock new frontiers in embodied intelligence. Yimu Tech's advancements promise to enhance robotic capabilities across industries and redefine the potential of human-robot collaboration.