On July 20, the A-share robot sector changed, among which the reducer concept stocks related to robots and new energy vehicles rose to the limit.
In the morning of the same day, Tesla CEO Elon Musk said in the earnings conference that artificial intelligence is the focus of Tesla's next development. The company has already built 10 Optimus robots and will do something useful at the factory sometime next year, and Optimus demand roughly matches production. There is currently no supplier that can produce the actuators required for Optimus, so for now it is mainly relying on in-house custom designs. In May, Nvidia founder Jensen Huang mentioned in his speech that the next wave of artificial intelligence will be a new type of artificial intelligence called embodied AI. Robot is a cutting-edge industry integrating advanced equipment and a new generation of information technology, known as the "jewel at the top of the manufacturing crown", often regarded by countries as a symbol to measure the level of national innovation and industrial capabilities, among which, humanoid robots are known as "the crown jewel of robots".
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What is a humanoid robot?
Humanoid robots are intelligent robots with similar body structure and movement patterns (bipedal walking, two-hand collaboration, etc.) similar to humans.
By definition, humanoid robots should be able to work in the environment where people work and live, operate tools and equipment designed for people, and communicate with people. Under this premise, humanoid robots should eventually have a similar body structure to humans, including head, torso and limbs, walk on both feet, perform various operations with multiple fingers, and have a certain degree of cognitive and decision-making intelligence.
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Why are humanoid robots the crown jewel of robots?
Humanoid robots are the products of multidisciplinary intersections such as machinery, materials, electronics, control, intelligence, and bionics, with strong industrial driving force but high technical difficulty. At present, there are still many difficult pain points in the development of humanoid robots, just to walk like a human, is a problem in the industry.
As a highly generalized, highly integrated and intelligent robot, humanoid robots require both strong motion control capabilities and powerful perception and computing capabilities.
Its technical difficulty lies in imitating the process of "perception-cognition-decision-execution" in various scenarios of people as much as possible, involving cutting-edge technologies in various fields such as bionic perception cognitive technology, full technology of vitality and electrical integration, artificial intelligence technology, big data cloud computing technology, and depth of view navigation technology.
The humanoid robot mainly includes four core technology modules: environment perception module, intelligent AI chip module, motion control module, and operating system module. Among them, the environment perception module is mainly responsible for data acquisition and environmental cognition (vision, sound, radar, pressure sensing, light sensing) and other sensors. Intelligent AI chip modules, including memory and smart chips responsible for data processing and computing power. Motion control module, including energy management system and action execution system (drive, controller, reducer, etc.). Operating system modules, including hardware abstract description, low-level driver management, execution of common functions, inter-program messaging, program package management, etc.
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What are the current domestic and foreign companies producing humanoid robots? Minsheng Securities said that Japan, the United States, the European Union and other countries are early large-scale players in the field of humanoid robots, and at present, China gradually attaches importance to the field of robots and increases resource investment. The technological gap between China and foreign countries has been greatly narrowed, and there is no obvious technological generational gap. Moreover, China has many factors such as industrial policy support, complete industrial chain, engineer dividend, and fast response speed, and has the strength to grow into a humanoid robot industry highland.
In 2000, Honda introduced ASIMO, a humanoid robot that can jump and use stairs; In 2006, Aldebaran Robotics released the humanoid robot Nao and in 2014 SoftBank's Pepper launched Pepper have achieved success in the commercial social field, including academic research, nursing, education, business hospitality, etc. In terms of technology and product maturity, Boston Dynamics is an industry leader, and the latest version of its humanoid robot Atlas displayed in 2019 has considerable maturity and can complete more complex work in a limited space.
According to Tesla, the Optimus robot is 172cm tall and weighs 56.6kg, which is equivalent to the body shape of a normal adult. Optimus can now walk, go up and down stairs, squat, pick up objects, and has the ability to protect itself and those around it. In the future, it can also cook, mend the lawn, help take care of the elderly, or replace humans in boring and dangerous jobs in factories.
Musk has said: "We should be able to produce millions of units, and it is expected that it will be much cheaper than cars, and the final price of the robot is estimated to be less than $20,000." ”
In terms of domestic enterprises, during the 2023 World Artificial Intelligence Conference, more than 20 robots were unveiled on site, including Cloudminds bipedal robots equipped with large-model dialogue capabilities, intelligent robots such as SI Xiaobei 4.0, Fanbo blade inspection robots, NetEase Fuxi embodied intelligent engineering robots, Qingdao Huituo Zaishan CAMO intelligent mine delivery robots, minimally invasive medical surgical robots, Meituan UAV V4, Yushu quadruped robots, HKUST aircraft dogs, Deep in the clouds, Lite3 quadruped robot, etc., many of which are debuts.
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When will the era of one robot per person come? Zheshang Securities said that the humanoid robot facing the C-end may develop in two stages: the 2022-2030 stage: niche and high-end. 2030-2040: Going public. Musk imagines a ratio of humanoid robots to humans of more than 1 to 1, and the long-term space is huge.
Huang Xiaoqing, founder and CEO of CloudMinds, predicted: "In the future, everyone in the world will have a robot, just like a mobile phone. Now it's equivalent to the early '90s, not many people have a mobile phone, but in 30 years everyone does. ”
In terms of enterprise production capacity, Musk has predicted that Tesla Optimus robots can be mass-produced and launched in 3-5 years. Gu Jie, chairman and CEO of Fourier Intelligence, said that humanoid robots have great potential in industry, rehabilitation, home, scientific research and other application scenarios, in the long run, the demand for general-purpose humanoid robots will be much higher than the current demand for industrial robots, Fourier Intelligent hopes to achieve mass production and delivery of general-purpose humanoid robots within one or two years, looking forward to about 3 years of robots can deftly complete some general tasks, 5-10 years to achieve robots truly into the family of ordinary people.
Editor: Zheng Yashuo