Lei Jun opened the year to award the robot dog team, Xiaomi million dollars spent on fresh graduates

On January 4, the first working day of 2022, Lei Jun, founder, chairman and CEO of Xiaomi Group, announced on Weibo that the Xiaomi Group's 2021 Million DOLLAR Technology Award was officially announced, and the highest award was won by the CyberDog "Iron Egg" bionic robot team. Lei Jun said that "technology-oriented" is the iron law that Xiaomi will never change, and ensuring the sense of achievement and happiness of engineers is the primary major event. Xiaomi will unswervingly continue to increase investment in research and development, and plans to invest more than 100 billion yuan in the next 5 years.

The Million Dollar Technology Award is Xiaomi's highest technology award, which mainly rewards a team of engineers with less than 10 people, and the prize money is a $1 million stock RSU (restricted stock unit) to motivate technical talents to innovate.

According to reports, the competition for the 2021 Xiaomi Million Dollar Award is very fierce, with a total of 68 projects declared. In the end, in addition to the CyberDog "Iron Egg" bionic robot that won the highest award, the mobile phone "Immortal Second Charge" team and the liquid camera team won the second prize, 8 teams won the third prize, and 9 teams won the excellence award.

Lei Jun said that the iron egg project brings together the technology of xiaomi's multiple research and development teams, and these technologies have been applied in core products. It is understood that the Xiaomi 12 mobile phone's well-received new computational photography technology "All Things Tracking" function comes from the "master tracking technology" of the iron egg. Secondly, the Iron Egg project represents the pioneering spirit of engineers, and a small team has achieved results far beyond people's imagination.

Bionic robots are a multidisciplinary cross-integration field with great challenges. After 10 months, Xiaomi's robot team completed the pre-research and batch delivery of the first generation of bionic quadruped robot technology, and boldly innovated in technologies such as joint motors, motion control, and intelligent interaction, reducing the price of quadruped bionic robots to less than 10,000 yuan for the first time and achieving mass production. In August last year, the "iron egg" four-legged robot that can run and walk and flip over made its debut at the press conference.

It is worth noting that there are two fresh master's graduates recruited by the school in 2020 in the iron egg project team. The two young engineers joined for only one year and won the highest technical award, which was the first time in Xiaomi. Lei Jun praised "heroes out of youth" and suggested that all departments boldly use young and outstanding talents.

According to reports, as of the end of 2021, Xiaomi has established a technology map involving 12 major fields and 98 subdivisions, covering various research and development and application technologies such as smart phones, smart cars, robots, software and algorithms, e-commerce, intelligent manufacturing, and finance.

Not long ago, Lei Jun announced that it will invest more than 100 billion yuan in research and development in the next 5 years. At the million dollar award ceremony, Lei Jun once again reiterated that he would unswervingly continue to increase investment in research and development. As of now, Xiaomi has 16,000 engineers, of which 5,000 will be recruited in 2021 alone. Lei Jun revealed that 5,000 outstanding young engineers will continue to be recruited in 2022.

Image source: Xiaomi