iFLYTEK Jiangtao: "Humanoid" robots will be a huge market running on the same track with global giants

Beijing, September 8 (Reporter Li Huimin) "At present, more than 30,000 robot developers are calling the platform of iFLYTEK, accounting for 80% of robot startups." Recently, Jiang Tao, co-founder and senior vice president of iFLYTEK, said when visiting the "Living Room of the China Upper Association" that iFLYTEK is empowering the entire industry, running in the same track with domestic and foreign giants represented by Google, and the bottom line stems from the core technology has always been leading, and has deep accumulation and strong support in the three fields of perception intelligence, cognitive intelligence and motion intelligence.

For the "inflection point theory" that is hotly discussed in the market, Jiang Tao believes that from the perspective of artificial intelligence, the core technologies of the three subdivisions involved in robots have a certain way to go, and the rhythm of technological maturity is inconsistent, so it cannot be synchronized, but affect each other and advance collaboratively.

Jiang Tao pointed out that in the context of deepening global aging, China will inevitably move from the "demographic dividend" to the "engineer dividend", and truly use technology to enhance productivity, there is only one way.

Jiang Tao, Co-Founder and Senior Vice President of iFLYTEK (Source: CCTV Capital Eye)

As for what "form" of the future robot is better, Jiang Tao said that in different scenarios, what "form" is most conducive to the role of the robot, and the market will naturally make a choice. It is a clear fact that society and the market are very urgent for "humanoid" robots, which will be a huge market. However, at present, the key bottlenecks in the two aspects of "soft" and "hard" are still there, and many need to be continuously iterated.

The reporter of CCTV Capital Eye noted that although Jiang Tao did not make a clear prediction on when the "humanoid" robot would enter the family, the timetable can be glimpsed from the "iFLYTEK Super Brain 2030" strategic plan released by iFLYTEK this year. The plan shows that iFLYTEK's ultimate goal in 2030 is to make a family service robot that can serve tea and water and can accompany family affection.

At the same time, Jiang Tao exclusively revealed in the living room that at the "1024 Developer Festival" more than a month later, iFLYTEK will soon release a new product, which is the "industrial inspection quadruped robot" in a specific scenario. The robot can penetrate into hazardous, specific industrial environments that require special attention, including the inspection of abnormal discharges, gas leaks, and so on.

The three core technologies all have a certain way to go

Focusing on artificial intelligence for 20 years, under the background of the current extremely strong "robot" atmosphere, has iFLYTEK felt that the robot field is about to usher in the inflection point of industrial technology and user demand?

From the perspective of artificial intelligence, Jiang Tao believes that the rhythm of technological maturity in the three subdivisions involved in robots is not consistent, so it cannot move forward synchronously, but affect each other and advance cooperatively.

Specifically, the three segments of AI include perceptual intelligence, cognitive intelligence, and motor intelligence.

"Perceptual intelligence is to make the computer like a person who can hear and speak, can see and recognize; Cognitive intelligence refers to the ability to make computers understand and think like people, including reading comprehension, logical reasoning analysis, inductive knowledge, expression and other abilities; Motion intelligence, that is, the ability of computers to simulate a person's movements. Jiang Tao explained.

Jiang Tao believes that in the field of cognitive intelligence, the current technology is still far from universal use.

Undoubtedly, in the field of speech in perceptual intelligence, iFLYTEK has always occupied a leading position.

"Let the computer speak, how to be more subtle, can imitate the voice of many people; This piece of technology has become more and more mature; In the future metaverse, that is, the virtual world corresponding to robots, the 'virtual human' technology has gradually matured. Jiang Tao introduced that in the field of speech recognition, it has made rapid progress in recent years and has a high accuracy rate. But in the case of high noise, various thick accents and speaking habits, there are still many problems to overcome.

In the field of perception, visual technologies that are highly related to robots, such as face recognition, many companies have also done very well.

"But in addition to being able to see human faces, robots actually need to have a lot of perception capabilities to continuously improve in specific and complex scenarios." Jiang Tao said.

For the cognitive intelligence aspect, which is of great concern to the industry as a whole, iFLYTEK is also a heavy investment in this field. Relevant data show that two-thirds of the research strength of the more than 1,000 people in the iFLYTEK Research Institute is invested in cognitive intelligence.

Jiang Tao believes that the "general" technology of cognitive intelligence needs to be further broken.

"In recent years, under the specific scenarios of education, medical care, etc., under the specific tasks of mental workers, through the study and training of a large amount of expert knowledge, cognitive intelligence is indeed approaching the level of human experts." Jiang Tao said, but the industry also generally recognizes that in the field of cognitive intelligence, if you want to have a universal model that can solve problems in various scenarios, there is still a further breakthrough in technology.

Jiang Tao also believes that in terms of motion intelligence, whether it is algorithms or from the continuous maturity of corresponding components, there is still a certain way to go.

"Motion intelligence has also made great progress in the past few years, and some of the more visible prototypes in the world have emerged. At present, traditional industrial robots mainly perform specific tasks in a relatively simple environment, and are still difficult to deal with in complex scenarios. Jiang Tao said.

From the perspective of application scenarios, robots are also divided into three categories, special robots, industrial robots and home robots.

The market value of special robots is used in more and more scenarios to complete specific tasks, such as military, mining, detection, etc.

Industrial robots are robots that can replace humans to complete certain actions, such as doing specific tasks in an uncomplicated environment on an assembly line.

"The entire industrial robot industry has been relatively mature and formed a considerable scale, on this basis, more flexible to increase personalization, smaller batches, more adapted to a variety of complex environments of industrial robots, is continuing to go up." Jiang Tao said.

The home robot is a service robot with the family as a typical scene. "Home robots are a huge market recognized globally, but they are really just getting started, and it will take time to mature." Jiang Tao said.

iFLYTEK itself is positioned as a "platform enabler"

So, when the tide comes, who can maximize the dividends of robots? What is their position in the industry?

In this regard, Jiang Tao pointed out that iFLYTEK's consistent artificial intelligence strategy is "platform + track", and in the robot industry pattern, it is positioned as "the enabler of the platform".

"Platform" refers to the open platform of artificial intelligence.

"iFLYTEK is one of the first national-level artificial intelligence open platforms in mainland China. That is, developers from all walks of life who need to use artificial intelligence capabilities do not have to do their own research in this area, as long as they are connected to the platform of iFLYTEK. Jiang Tao introduced.

A shocking statistic shows that iFLYTEK's positioning itself as an "enabler" is not a lie.

Jiang Tao mentioned that in the industrial field, there are currently more than 30,000 robot developers are calling the platform of iFLYTEK, accounting for 80% of the robot startups, iFLYTEK through the artificial intelligence open platform to cut into the industry, and is empowering the entire industry.

Jiang Tao added that in this field, iFLYTEK's competitors include foreign artificial intelligence open platforms represented by Google, as well as some domestic enterprises that have done relatively large.

Running on the same track as the global giants, iFLYTEK's confidence stems from the fact that its core technology has always been leading, and it has deep accumulation and strong support in the three fields of perception, cognition and sports intelligence.

In terms of perceptual intelligence that robots can hear, speak, see and recognize, iFLYTEK has the only "National Engineering Laboratory for Speech and Language" in mainland China, and has a good production, learning and research system, covering relevant research institutes of the University of Science and Technology of China, Tsinghua University and Chinese Academy of Sciences.

"And we have formed a complete set of processes from the research of the source technology, to the engineering of the technical prototype, to the product, to the commodity." Jiang Tao said.

How can machines understand and think in the field of cognitive intelligence? The country's only "State Key Laboratory of Cognitive Intelligence" is also located at iFLYTEK, which is enough to illustrate the problem.

In the first half of this year, in the world's top "cognitive intelligence" challenge, iFLYTEK set new global records in both competitions, including both general mission competitions and specific mission competitions.

Jiang Tao believes that the high intensity of investment maintained by iFLYTEK over the years has formed many achievements of cognitive intelligence that are very leading in the world.

According to reports, in terms of motion intelligence, iFLYTEK and the joint laboratory of the School of Engineering of the University of Science and Technology of China university have also made breakthrough progress in recent years.

"Now we have formed a super-large-scale AI simulation training platform, which allows robots and robot dogs to run in various terrains and landforms simulated, such as smooth, small gravel, steps, cement, asphalt, etc., so that robots can fall and get up again." Through continuous training in the simulation system, our algorithm is continuously iterated to adapt to a variety of complex environments, rather than 'bar clicking' and falling down when the environment changes slightly. Jiang Tao said that the data accumulation of this simulation training platform can be very fast, and if only rely on physical robots to run to training, the accumulation will be extremely slow.

Among the robots that run through the mountains and fields in the simulated landform, including tens of thousands of four-legged robots, among them are the new products that iFLYTEK will release more than a month later.

Jiang Tao exclusively revealed for the first time in the living room that the new technology products about artificial intelligence and robots to be released by iFLYTEK on the "1024 Developer Festival" are "industrial inspection quadruped robots" in specific scenarios. This robot can penetrate into a specific industrial environment to check for abnormal discharges, gas leaks, etc., which are dangerous scenarios that require special attention. "In the next step, we will gradually develop more area-specific, end-to-end robots that solve specific problems." Jiang Tao said.

It is understood that the "1024 Developer Festival" is a grand festival of iFLYTEK's artificial intelligence open platform, which is held on October 24 every year, and it is the sixth session this year.

There will be a huge market for "humanoid" robots

In the robot boom ushered in by this round, the most interesting thing is a very key form of robots - human form. At the same time, there is still no lack of doubts, that is, why should robots use "humanoids" with higher technical and cost requirements? Is this pattern necessary?

"Speaking of the necessity of robot 'human form', we want to go back to the beginning of this year, iFLYTEK officially released the 'iFLYTEK Super Brain 2030' strategic plan, which is a 10-year, long-term plan, the ultimate goal is to make a family service robot that can serve tea and water and can accompany family affection." Jiang Tao said that this kind of robot, it must be "human-shaped", in order to adapt to the environment of the family.

According to Jiang Tao, the plan of "Xunfei Super Brain 2030" is divided into three stages, and the overall strategy is to "lay eggs along the way", form industrialization results in excess of heaviness, and support continuous research with commercial success.

The first stage is about two or three years, and will successively launch "four-legged robots" and "robot pets", and the time points are at the end of this year and next year, respectively.

"What is clearer at present is that 'four-legged robots' have their own unique value. It has inherent stability, after better training, in mines, ports and other more complex environments, better adapted than the 'wheeled robot', at the same time, compared to the 'bipedal robot', its algorithm requirements are not so high. Jiang Tao judged that this new form would become the mainstream within a stage. The "robot pet" is a robot that can interact with each other and accompany the growth of children.

In the middle of the "iFLYTEK Super Brain 2030", iFLYTEK will launch an "exoskeleton robot", which is mainly beneficial to the elderly and disabled people with leg and foot difficulties, and put on the "exoskeleton robot", you can move freely or even walk like a fly.

"By the later stage of the plan, the conditions for 'humanoid' home service robots will gradually be available." Jiang Tao expects that the real family "humanoid" robot will come out, which will be a huge and incomparable market, perhaps larger than our current automobile industry.

Jiang Tao pointed out that in the future, the world is facing the problem of population aging, and in the next stage, China should continue to move forward, from the "demographic dividend" to the "engineer dividend", and truly use technology to enhance productivity, there is only one way.

"In the future robot in each scenario, what 'form' is most conducive to the role of robots, the market will naturally make a choice." Jiang Tao said that in the process of moving forward, it is a clear fact that the demand for "humanoid" robots in society and the market is very urgent.

Of course, the immediate reality is that the key bottlenecks in the "soft" and "hard" aspects are still there, and many need to be continuously iterated.

Jiang Tao said that the "soft" part is the "brain" part of the robot, and some technologies are close to use, and some have gaps.

Hardware-related technologies, such as artificial muscles, need new technological breakthroughs if they are to be truly as dexterous as the human hand.

In terms of sensors, although acoustic sensors have been relatively mature, iFLYTEK's microphone array can already give ultrasound that the human ear cannot hear, but there is still a big gap in other categories.

"I believe that as long as there is demand traction, the entire industry will continue to evolve." Jiang Tao said so. (CCTV Capital Eye)