Editor’s notes: the latest Entrepreneur issued the interview of PartnerX CEO Fei Xufeng. Abilix, educational robot brand subordinated to PartnerX, is leader and developer of global educational robot. As witness of the beginning and development of the industry, Mr. Fei made specified explanation on educational robots.

In 1996, PartnerX was established in Caohejing, Shanghai. It is the earliest domestic robotic company. According to Mr. Fei, at that time, when searching educational robot from Google, he could find no words. Abilix invented this category.

After 20-year development, more than 21500 primary and secondary schools, more than 1000 universities and over 1200 Abilix homes from more than 31 countries and regions use Abilix as platform to teach, hold contests and scientific activities.

At that time, medical robot, industrial robot and military robot technologies in Germany, U.S. and Japan have been matured. But they discovered that the educational robot market is still unearthed. It is discovered that educational robots possess huge educational values which can arise kids’ passion in technology, enhance their scientific and technological literacy, creative ability and practical ability. Meanwhile, it is a promising industry. So the company set their business on the basis of this field.

The core of educational robot is tecnology and education.

The core of educational robot lies in two aspects, one is technology and the other is education.

Technologically speaking, at that time, most of the robots need C language programming, which is not applicable to young children. It can only be sold to middle school students and university students. For this reason, PartnerX developed a flowchart programming software, which is also the first robotic software APP catering to kids. It needed no codes and can be programmed with icons. Meanwhile, PartnerX combined many core and difficult technologies into languages understandable by kids. “Most of the people do not want to be educated. Playing is their innate. So the first problem to solve is how to make them access the robot fast. Drawing flowchart is prerequisite of code programming. The objective to learn programming is not to cultivate programmers, but to train their logic thinking.” said Mr. Fei.

Currently, Abilix possesses totaling 200 patented products with a uniform system structure and brain: Abilix Bran v1.0. It also boasts 4 programming APPs, voice recognition, face recognition and image recognition engines, APP stores and skill stores. Speaking of the most favored brick series Krypton, its calculation ability is 26.6 times that of LEGO, equipped with 6 motors and 26 sensors, and its unique six faces attachable system, it is completely different from LEGO. It is the educational robot with largest creation space in the world.

From the aspect of educational, with the growth in number of educational robots, there is one hidden mistake: the mixture of concepts of robotic education and educational robot.

Fei Xufeng said, generally speaking, robotic educational is the study of basic knowledge and skills of robots, or use robots to optimize the teaching effect, so as to enhance students’ information literacy and technology literacy. But it is limited to technological utilization.

However, educational robots have comprehensive teaching system, concentrating on the cultivation of success, creative, practical and analytic abilities, which is core to promote quality-oriented education.

Curriculum and hardware are both important

Currently, there are three commercial modes of PartnerX:

1.School lab, cooperate with schools and establish robot curriculum. This is the most mature business of PartnerX.

2.Activity center. This is like institute, which provide capability cultivation curriculum based on educational robots.

3.Pure product-based 2C business.

According to Fei Xufeng, PartnerX didn’t obtain break balance until 2005. The promotion of PartnerX robots mainly based on B terminal. In 2000, Abilix established the earliest robotic contest Abilix Cup. Up till now, the contest has been held for 15 times. The robot curriculum also became select curriculum of new syllabus of ministry of education. “These are all promoted by PartnerX. Without the focus of country, we are hard to develop.” Said Mr. Fei.

Currently, PartnerX has written more than 50 sets of curriculum, translated into 9 language editions and has been batch exported to more than 30 countries. Mr. Fei said that it was hard to change the state education system. So the IT literacy and ability should be trained from in-school classes and the cultivation of practical, creative and analytic abilities.

Extend C Terminal Products

In 1998, PartnerX introduced its first product: ASM robot, which sold 100 thousand globally. It is the first robot using flowchart to program and the first robot to possess its operation system. It sold best in mobile robots.

Making educational robot is related with the environment. At that time, PC had not been generalized and the cost to make robots was high. Nowadays, based on the structure of cellphone, the chip costs less than a hundred Yuan. And the R&D, channel construction and intelligent manufacturing has got break through. Abilix strated to develop the C terminal business. Mr. Fei said, there was no difference between 2B and 2C products. The difference lies in where they are used. Currently, PartnerX possesses five brands: Abilix, YIRO, EVOX, DRAGONGUARD and  INNOX.

It is estimated that till 2020,educational robots will possess market space of about 300 billion Yuan. “If you can afford an ipad, you can afford educational robots.” For the time being, there are few competitive enterprises of this field, however, it has been heated. If PartnerX can face the future competition, the brand will truly be influential.

In the future, PartnerX will develop more products like domestic robots catering to adults and robots used for industrial manufacturing.