Automatic following products are "black technology" products with cool features.
There are many technologies to achieve automatic following, but the most commonly used one is UWB, because UWB has high positioning accuracy, the current cost is also decreasing, and UWB is gradually becoming popular in mobile phones. With the support of various factors, there are more and more smart following products based on UWB.
In fact, as early as five or six years ago, the author learned that Xiaomi's ecological chain companies had released a UWB-based following suitcase. At that time, UWB was mainly used in industrial scenarios. Suddenly, a C-end product of the following type appeared. The industry's expectations for such products are also relatively high. The more optimistic prediction is that this type of product will have a demand for millions of UWB chips each year, because the product architecture of the following suitcase is similar to that of a digital car key, and one device requires multiple chips (3 on the suitcase + 1 carry-on tag).
At that time, the volume of millions of PCS was a very large number for UWB, but later the market feedback of this product did not seem to meet expectations. Later, we also saw some UWB-based smart following suitcase products, but the volume was not large.
In this year's white paper survey, we found that there are more and more follow-up application scenarios based on UWB technology.
For example, in the application of golf follow-up cars, many UWB solution providers in the industry have come into contact with the needs of such scenarios. The needs solved by such products are to save golfers a lot of driving time, which is quite practical. However, golf is not a popular sport, and the overall market volume will not be too large. It is estimated that the total volume will be several hundred thousand units per year.
However, there are still many points in golf scenarios that can be combined with UWB. For example, adding UWB and inertial navigation to golf can accurately determine the trajectory of golf balls, or facilitate staff to find balls, etc., and there are also commercial cases at present.
In addition, some solution providers have also reported that they have come into contact with the needs of following stage lights based on UWB, that is, the lights automatically focus on certain special people (carrying UWB tags), so that there is no need for special people to control, saving labor costs. Although this kind of demand is more interesting, it is also a niche market, and the volume will not be too large.
Another type of demand is to combine with outdoor live broadcast scenes, add a UWB module to the mobile phone holder, and then wear a tag on the anchor. By adjusting the direction of the holder, the phone's lens is aimed at the anchor. With the full popularization of video content, the demand for this scene will be relatively larger. The author believes that this is a market of millions of PCS.
In addition, among the AI toys that are very popular recently, there is a type of product that is an automatic following robot dog pet/robot/toy car. Some companies are beginning to launch products such as automatic following suitcases. This is also a typical automatic following scene. The product is similar to the automatic following suitcase. Although this type of product is still in its early stages, the quadrant space is large enough and we can pay attention to it in real time.
What other automatic following products based on UWB are welcome to communicate.
This paper is from Ulink Media, Shenzhen, China, the organizer of IOTE EXPO (IoT Expo in China)
