Recently, Dreame’s ecological chain companies Keting Technology and Livox officially announced the completion of the first phase of the three-year strategic cooperation: as of February 2025, Livox has delivered a total of 100,000 Mid-360 laser radars, and plans to deliver more than one million radars in the next three years. This data not only confirms the commercial explosiveness of the technical integration of both parties, but also redefines the competitiveness of China’s smart manufacturing in the global outdoor smart cleaning track.
Robot lawn mower track: an industrial revolution from “wired constraints” to “boundless intelligence”
The prototype of the robot lawn mower can be traced back to the 1990s. In 1997, the Outdoor Power Equipment Institute (OPEI) first proposed the concept of “smart robot lawn mower”, and the early products were based on “random collision + buried line navigation” as the core features.
With the rise of sensor technology and lithium electrification trends, robot lawn mowers have entered the “semi-intelligent” stage. After 2010, Real Time Kinematic (RTK) and ultra-wideband (UWB) technologies were introduced, and with the addition of visual sensors, the initial transition from wired to wireless was gradually achieved. However, it also faces problems such as easy signal loss, low obstacle avoidance accuracy, and poor adaptability to complex environments.
After 2021, with the continuous maturity of navigation planning algorithms and the continuous improvement of sensor performance, the leapfrog upgrade of lawn mower products began to be promoted.
In 2023, Livox officially announced the launch of the new hybrid solid-state 3D LiDAR in the Mid series: Mid-360. In April 2024, Keting Technology, a subsidiary of Dreame Technology, launched the first borderless smart robot lawn mower A1 based on the Mid-360 radar, which not only solved the core pain points of traditional robot lawn mowers, namely, “boundary dependence and poor environmental adaptability”, but also opened up a new track of “boundless smart courtyard” through the deep integration of “high-performance hardware + scenario-based algorithms”.
Technology fusion: From “mowing tools” to “garden smart hub”
The Livox Mid-360 LiDAR provided by Livox has become the “eyes” of the Dreame smart robot lawn mower with its four core advantages:
Ultra-long detection distance: 70m@80%, 40m@10% (usually 30m@10% for general manufacturers), with 360°×59° ultra-wide angle, can cover a 3,000㎡ large courtyard. Even in an environment with tree cover and complex light and shadow, it can still quickly build a high-precision 3D map, and has better recognition capabilities for more than 100 common obstacles (such as pets, children’s toys, irregular flower beds, etc.).
High precision: The accuracy can reach 2cm (usually > 3cm for general manufacturers), and the distance from obstacles can be accurately controlled when mowing along the edge, avoiding collisions while reducing weed residues.
Non-repetitive scanning: The unique non-repetitive scanning method can quickly improve the resolution over time integration and obtain richer point cloud features. 0.1 second is equivalent to 40-line LiDAR, which can identify subtle obstacles in the lawn.
Cost and scale advantages: As the first 3D laser radar manufacturer to enter the robot lawn mower track, Livox Mid-360 has achieved an industry-leading balance between cost and performance through its technological first-mover advantage + mass production scale effect, which is also one of the main factors for Dreame to finally choose Livox.
Of course, the cooperation between Dreame and Livox is not a simple hardware superposition, but a collaborative reconstruction of product logic through deep technology.
Faced with the pain points of traditional lawn mowers, such as easy loss of environmental signals, poor user installation and deployment experience, and weak obstacle avoidance capabilities, Dreame Technology independently developed the OmniSense™ 3D super-sensing system. Combined with the Mid-360 laser radar, it can perceive more information in three-dimensional space, integrate multiple functions such as mapping, positioning, and obstacle avoidance, significantly improve the stability of positioning, effectively improve mowing efficiency, ensure that no area is missed during the cutting process, and achieve centimeter-level precise obstacle avoidance.
At the 2024 IFA exhibition, Dreame Technology exhibited the upgraded robot lawn mower A2. It has achieved many innovations based on A1, integrated AI vision technology, combined with outdoor environment algorithms, and built an improved version of OmniSense™ 2.0 3D super-sensing system. For medium and large courtyards of 3,000 square meters, A2 has built 3D maps in real time, completed automatic navigation and precise positioning, and realized the freedom of intelligent mowing.
In terms of safety performance, OmniSense™ 2.0AI vision technology has greatly improved the obstacle recognition ability of A2. It is not only a mowing tool, but also an intelligent guardian of the courtyard. Users can view the courtyard environment in real time, set patrol tasks, and notify the owner of abnormal human activities, further enhancing the safety of the courtyard.
Overall, Mid-360’s successful verification in the pursuit of robot lawn mowers lies not only in the leading technical indicators, but also in the cost control ability guided by market demand, so as to become the core force to promote the smart robot lawn mowers from “usable” to “easy to use”. From 2024 to February 2025, in less than a year, Livox and Dreame announced the cumulative delivery of more than 100,000 radars, confirming the dual feasibility of technology and business.
Service robots continue to evolve, and the demand for LiDAR is becoming increasingly prominent
According to industry data, the global market size of smart robot lawn mowers exceeded $5 billion in 2024, with an annual growth rate of over 35%. The demand for “boundless, highly intelligent” courtyard solutions among European and American families was exploded. Against this background, the strategic cooperation between Dreame’s Keting Technology and Livox has redefined the industry standard with the technical combination of “LiDAR + AI algorithm”.
Behind the milestone of Dreame × Livox delivering 100,000 LiDARs, Livox Mid-360 technology has demonstrated its cross-scenario adaptation potential. Livox is driving the market with “hardware innovation + scenario penetration” from the courtyard battlefield of smart robot lawn mowers to the broader field of commercial service robots, quietly weaving a multi-dimensional ecological network covering commercial service robots, industrial mobile robots, and smart cities.
In recent years, the scale of China’s commercial service robot market has continued to expand. According to data from the New Strategy Low-Speed Unmanned Driving Industry Research Institute, the market size of cleaning and sanitation robots China alone in 2024 reached 2.76 billion, and the cumulative shipments of major products exceeded 12,980 units (excluding small household / wall cleaning / pool cleaning robots). It is worth noting that the global market demand was surged simultaneously. It is expected that by 2030, the scale of global commercial service robots will exceed hundreds of billions of yuan.
As the application scenarios extend to complex environments such as supermarkets, hospitals, and transportation hubs, commercial service robots have higher requirements for positioning accuracy and intelligence levels, requiring robots to upgrade from single-function equipment to intelligent bodies with environmental perception, autonomous decision-making, and continuous evolution capabilities. In this context, traditional single sensors can no longer meet the multi-dimensional perception needs in complex scenarios. 3D laser radars with high-precision three-dimensional modeling capabilities are becoming the core hardware cornerstone for robots to achieve environmental understanding, path planning, and safe obstacle avoidance.
Livox is driven by “hardware innovation + scenario penetration“. Its 3D LiDAR technology not only enables the smart robot lawn mower to perform refined operations in the courtyard scenario, but also provides underlying support for the robot’s path planning and obstacle avoidance in complex environments through multi-modal fusion perception capabilities. Especially in the AGV/AMR, cleaning robots, logistics robots and other 100 billion-level tracks, Livox’s technological advantages are being transformed into significant market competitiveness, and the imagination space of commercial value enabled by its technology will continue to open up.
