AWS Case Study: Segway-Ninebot

2022

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Segway-Ninebot specializes in innovative short-distance transportation and robots and boasts two brands, Ninebot and Segway. Based on the global market with an international perspective, Segway-Ninebot takes “simplify the movement of people and things, make life more convenient” as its mission and focuses on leading the innovation and reform of intelligent short-distance transportation and robotics.
 
Founded in 2012, headquartered in Beijing, China, and with operations in Asia Pacific, Europe, and America, Segway-Ninebot has subsidiaries in Beijing, Shanghai, Los Angeles, Seattle, Boston, Amsterdam, Dallas, Seoul, Munich, Changzhou, Shenzhen and Hangzhou, and sells products in more than 230 countries and regions around the world.
 
As a high-tech enterprise with R&D, production, sales and service capabilities, Segway-Ninebot holds more than 2,400 core patents around the world, which are widely used in innovative short-distance transportation, robots, entertainment and other areas. With its products, including but not limited to electric self-balancing scooters, electric scooters, electric moped, electric gokart kits, electric two-wheelers, all-terrain vehicles, mecha kits, robots, and smart shared electric scooters, Segway-Ninebot seeks to meet the diverse and personalized needs of users and promote the development of the industry.
 
Challenges

Over the years, Segway-Ninebot has been tapping its potential in technology and design based on user application scenarios. A large quantity of its innovations in technology and design have been recognized by international market and have brought considerable returns from it. In essence, technical and data systems can help Segway-Ninebot become closer to users, providing better services and more targeted innovation value to them. According to its financial report of 2021, Segway-Ninebot spent more than RMB 500 million on R&D, further improved the strategic collaboration between the mid-end for innovation and the front-end for business R&D and continuously sought to create unique value for users. During the development and growth of Segway-Ninebot, cloud is one of the most important cornerstones. Segway-Ninebot requires flexible and resilient cloud resources, which are highly convenient and stable to establish innovative application-level services, so that it can provide better product and services to global users and accelerate commercialization.
 
Segway-Ninebot’s mission of building smart mobility comprises two core elements, i.e., smart mobility of people (intelligent short-distance transportation) and smart mobility of things (automatically-moving robots). Specifically, in terms of short-distance transportation data, Segway-Ninebot’s cloud platform covers IoV, big data, App operation and management, user management system, cloud communication, and other application scenarios. Through this one-stop Internet service platform, Segway-Ninebot provides efficient and secure data and significantly improves smart product experience for users. In terms of robots, Segway-Ninebot’s cloud platform collects data on road conditions and environment through robots in both indoor and outdoor scenarios, and through cloud computing and analysis, optimizes local and cloud algorithm and applications at OTA robot end and generates new data, creating a closed loop for data and improving the intelligence of robots. A large proportion of Segway-Ninebot’s products are networked intelligent products, which are sold in five regions around the world. Millions of networked vehicles generate hundreds of millions of messages, producing data in TB level. How to effectively store, manage and analyze these data and use them to create value are major challenges for Segway-Ninebot.
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“The IoV and big data platforms based on AWS enable Segway-Ninebot to collect more than 2.5TB of data on average each day, offer efficient services to nearly 10 million users and millions of online vehicles, and provide revolutionary experience in smart mobility. Through DevOps, Segway-Ninebot can deliver the latest innovative product and services to users in shorter time while sharply reducing development costs.”

Lu Jianwei
Head of Big Data and Cloud Service R& D, Segway-Ninebot

Why AWS?

When Segway-Ninebot was just prepared to build application and services on cloud and develop overseas business in 2015 and 2016, AWS was chosen as ones of preferred cloud service providers to support its global operations. Since 2018, Segway-Ninebot hassuccessively migrated its PaaS platform services from other cloud provider to AWS to maintain continual development and innovation. According to Lu Jianwei, Segway-Ninebot’s persistent deployment on AWS are based on the following key considerations:

Firstly, based on AWS, Segway-Ninebot can easily ensure the security of user data and the compliance of business applications. Lu Jianwei said that when the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) was initially promulgated in 2018, Segway-Ninebot was fully aware of the importance of data privacy and compliance. Owing to the extensive compliance practices and partner resources promptly provided by AWS, Segway-Ninebot could accordingly adjust its technical structure and build a practical application compliance and data security system. In addition, the global infrastructure resources of AWS provide a “nearby springboard” for Segway-Ninebot’ flourishing smart mobility business and a solid foundation for its rapid global business expansion.

Secondly, one of the most central and representative business strategies of Segway-Ninebot is to develop its intelligent manufacturing business overseas. Throughout this process, cloud has played a pivotal role in providing stable business support, optimizing terminal-user experience, transforming modern cloud native application practices, and even accelerating the stride towards becoming a data-driven organization. During this process, AWS team has provided seamless and consistent experience, covering technology stack optimization, product and service application implementation, and other areas, with long-term and convincing reliability. “AWS offers a wide range of mixed product and service options for various scenarios, which are sufficient to meet our different business needs. Based on a timely and thorough understanding of our business features, AWS team provides tailored technical support for us” Lu Jianwei said.

Thirdly, by using AWS, the Dev team of Segway-Ninebot continues to increase its cloud skills and stimulate its creative potentials. The members of the team have grown from less than 10 people when Segway-Ninebot was initially based on another cloud provider to nearly 60 people, who have independently developed the big data and IoV platforms, providing services to nearly 10 million users and millions of online vehicles. The Ops team focuses on optimizing cloud use, especially improving the efficiency and automation of cloud resources as well as cost structure. Meanwhile, DevOps maximally ensures the stability of online business and the continuity of application iteration and service delivery.

In addition, AWS has an extensive partner and customer base in the global smart mobility eco-chain, which in fact plays a catalyzing role in accelerating the implementation of Segway-Ninebot’s innovative applications and delivering their full value.

Currently, the back-end services for apps, IoV platform, big data analysis platform, overseas SAP business, and other core applications of Segway-Ninebot are all built and operated based on AWS. The AWS services used by Segway-Ninebot include, without limitation, Amazon Elastic Compute Cloud (Amazon EC2), Amazon Simple Storage Service (Amazon S3), Amazon Virtual Private Cloud (Amazon VPC), Amazon OpenSearch Service, Amazon EMR, Amazon Elastic Kubernetes Service (Amazon EKS), Amazon Managed Streaming for Apache Kafka (Amazon MSK), Amazon Simple Queue Service (Amazon SQS), Amazon API Gateway, Amazon Relational Database Service (Amazon RDS), and Amazon Aurora.

AWS-based System Architecture of Segway-Ninebot
Benefits
 
Based on AWS, the IoV platform of Segway-Ninebot has successfully laid foundation for production and research, developed data service capabilities and provided service support for scenarios from product access, IoV protocol formulation and development, production management, vehicle management to data collection, operation management, post-sales service and OTA. Therefore, the IoV platform is capable to manage the whole life cycle of vehicles. The IoV platform, which is connected to more than 330 models of vehicles under 48 sub-product categories in the 8 major product lines of Segway-Ninebot, collecting over 2.5TB of data on average each day from a daily average of nearly one million real-time online vehicles, and reaching the DAU (Daily Active User) of 10 millon.
 
The IoV platform is connected to massive devices, supports data collection from devices to cloud, and ensures real-time collection and historical query of data. In addition, the IoV platform provides IoV data analysis, and sends command data to devices through the IoV gateway to achieve remote control. Meanwhile, the IoV platform offers value-added services, such as vehicle management, remote diagnosis, data analysis, OTA upgrade, and intelligent service, enabling various IoV application scenarios. According to Lu Jiawei, the greatest value of the IoV platform lies in extending the user experience of intelligent hardware products and creating a closer connection with users.

For instance, the IoV platform can achieve high-quality track of vehicles through their running status, fault and alarm data to better understand the actual use of the vehicles and inform the targeted optimization of product design, parts supply chain, and other aspects; in case of theft or robbery of a vehicle, its user can track its location in real time through the app and lock it remotely to avoid the malicious abuse of the vehicle; the SOS crash alarm function of the IoV platform can detect an abnormal crash behavior through a vehicle sensor, give a real-time alarm, call the user's emergency contact person for help through the back-end, and send a message containing vehicle location information to such contact person; the IoV platform combines IoV with big data analysis for breakthroughs in technologies, such as collecting battery data, predicting battery life at service end through big data modeling, giving timely alarms against potential risks, and blocking output usage when necessary... Lu Jianwei said, “All these application scenarios for products and services are always online, scalable, and for global users, which is totally unimaginable without cloud. For example, API Gateway, working together with Amazon SQS, allows messages to be pushed accurately, and Amazon OpenSearch Service enables efficient search. Based on the extensive and strong mix of services provided by AWS, Segway-Ninebot can deliver the latest innovative product and service experience to users in a shorter time while sharply reducing development costs.”

The IoV platform is not only for individual consumers, but can also be provided to small and medium-sized mobility service operators and other toB customers through multi-tenant solution to facilitate their business operation and management. Moreover, platform services for commercial robots in different scenarios such as hotels, restaurants, and office buildings are also an important source of revenue. The cloud-based IoV and big data analysis platforms of Segway-Ninebot have largely improved its internal and external operations. Internally, these platforms inform decision-making on operation update, product service upgrade, and other matters. Externally, they raise service delivery standards, build a business moat while expanding the market, and continuously spawn value transformation. According to Lu Jianwei, the services of the IoV platform can be iterated for one to two times in a month, while the commercial robot platform, still in its early stage, is growing faster, with a higher iteration frequency and agility, and has become a test field for the creative ideas of Segway-Ninebot’s DevOps team.

Looking forward, Segway-Ninebot will continue to, based on AWS and considering its current and future business needs, optimize its services in due course and build a balanced, moderate, and forward-looking technical architecture. Segway-Ninebot is orderly proceeding with tasks, including microservice-driven function module splitting and container transformation, and plans to adapt more hosting services. According to its “ Technology Leading ” strategy, Segway-Ninebot will deeper dive into the value of data assets collected by the IoV and big data analysis platforms and, based on the successful experience of industry benchmarks in developing intelligent manufacturing business overseas, strive towards a data-driven innovative company and make a leap forward in its development.

About Segway-Ninebot

Segway-Ninebot specializes in innovative short-distance transportation and robots and boasts two brands, Ninebot and Segway. Based on the global market with an international perspective, Segway-Ninebot takes “simplify the movement of people and things, make life more convenient” as its mission and focuses on leading the innovation and reform of intelligent short-distance transportation and robotics. 

Benefits of AWS

  • Ensuring data security and business compliance in support of global business expansion
  • Showing convincing reliability throughout innovations in application services
  • Improving cost-effectiveness through DevOps and building an innovative middle-office system

AWS Services Used

Amazon EKS

Amazon Elastic Kubernetes Service (Amazon EKS) is a managed container service to run and scale Kubernetes applications in the cloud or on-premises.

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Amazon EMR

Amazon EMR is a cloud big data platform for running large-scale distributed data processing jobs, interactive SQL queries, and machine learning (ML) applications using open-source analytics frameworks such as Apache Spark, Apache Hive, and Presto.

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Amazon Aurora

Amazon Aurora provides built-in security, continuous backups, serverless compute, up to 15 read replicas, automated multi-Region replication, and integrations with other AWS services.

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Amazon RDS

Amazon Relational Database Service (Amazon RDS) is a collection of managed services that makes it simple to set up, operate, and scale databases in the cloud.

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