Towards embodied general artificial intelligence, humanoid robots become the "reservoir" of future industries

Recently, the 2023 World Robot Conference Humanoid Robot Technology and Industry Development Forum was held in Beijing. Xu Xiaolan, vice minister of the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology, said that new technologies, new products and new formats represented by humanoid robots and general artificial intelligence are booming, and are becoming the commanding heights of global scientific and technological innovation, a new track for future industries and a new engine for economic growth.

At present, humanoid robots have entered the stage of industrialization. Experts said that the development of humanoid robots is a systematic project that integrates various cutting-edge technologies such as general artificial intelligence, perception and control, and simulation to break the technical bottleneck, promote the integration and application of emerging technologies, improve the motion intelligence and cognitive intelligence of humanoid robots, and continuously promote the industrialization of humanoid robots to mature and land, and cultivate and expand the "reservoir" of robot industry.

Convergence of emerging technologies

Xu Xiaolan said that at present, breakthroughs in general artificial intelligence technology have provided an important driving force for the innovative development of humanoid robots. Humans are ushering in an upsurge of integration and development of humanoid robots and general artificial intelligence.

"The emergence of artificial intelligence large models represented by ChatGPT will create more new value for the industry." Yao Zhizhi, winner of the 2000 Turing Award, academician of the Chinese Academy of Sciences and dean of the Institute of Interdisciplinary Information Science of Tsinghua University, said that the language processing ability of artificial intelligence large models can be regarded as "brains", and if you want to truly exert the power of general artificial intelligence, the future AGI (general artificial intelligence) needs to have a tangible entity, so that it can interact with the real physical world and complete various tasks, so that technology can bring greater value.

Yao Zhizhi believes that to create a general-purpose robot with pan-application capabilities, it is necessary to not only make it have the three main components of the body, cerebellum and brain that the human embodied intelligent body has, but also make it more suitable for the human social environment. The human form is the most suitable form. "Body parts need to have enough hardware, such as sensors and actuators; The cerebellum controls the body and completes complex tasks by dominating multiple perceptions such as vision and touch; The brain dominates the logical reasoning, decision-making, and planning of the upper layers to communicate with other agents and environments in natural language. Yao Zhizhi said.

"Artificial intelligence can improve the two systems of robot motion intelligence and cognitive intelligence." Marc Raibert, founder and CEO of Boston Dynamics, said that the company has launched artificial intelligence research projects to conduct research on humanoid robot understanding, self-learning, perception, data collection and analysis, and dynamic movement, and applied to the company's humanoid robot Atlas products.

In addition, not only the use of software technologies such as artificial intelligence, but also the development of humanoid robots is a systematic engineering that integrates multiple interdisciplinary and cutting-edge technologies. "Hardware engineering is as important as software engineering for the future of robotics." Marc Raibert said that controlling humanoid robots has a lot of complexities that other robots do not have, and software cannot overcome all the limitations of hardware, and it is still necessary to continuously improve the hydraulic system, special valves, special batteries, advanced visual sensing, and the use of 3D printing to optimize the load of humanoid robots, so as to achieve structural balance, improve the range of motion, strength and speed of humanoid robots, and improve their flexibility and practicality.

Chen Jianyu, assistant professor at the Institute of Interdisciplinary Information Studies of Tsinghua University and founder of Star Era, said that humanoid robots are "aggregators" of robot capabilities, and robot-powered machinery and artificial intelligence-related technologies and applications can be given to humanoid robots.

Accelerate industrialization

At present, a number of enterprises are accelerating the deployment of humanoid robots. During the 2023 World Robot Conference, Unitree released H1 humanoid robots to achieve strong balance, running and avoidance capabilities, priced at $90,000 each, and are expected to start shipping in the fourth quarter of 2023. The humanoid robot "Little Star" of the Star Era was unveiled, with self-developed high torque density motor, modular joints, and a fully self-developed integrated machine structure. Xiaomi showed the humanoid bionic robot CyberOne and the second-generation Cyber Dog at the scene. UBTECH released a multi-modal interaction system that accesses artificial intelligence large models to improve the self-decision-making ability of the company's humanoid robot products. Zhiyuan Robot released the "Expedition A1" embodied intelligent robot on August 18, the whole machine adopts 49 degrees of freedom, including harmonic integrated joints, brushless planetary servo structure, and hollow cup joints, which is close to Tesla's solution.

Industrial manufacturing, commercial services and home companionship are the application scenarios with the most development space for humanoid robots. Zhou Jian, founder, chairman and CEO of UBTECH, said that for example, in the field of industrial manufacturing, humanoid robots with high cognitive intelligence and motor ability have more advantages in collaborative work than quadruped robots and AGVs (logistics robots). In terms of family companionship, the problem of human-computer interaction can be solved in the future, the humanoid robot's ability to imitate actions is enhanced, and the humanoid robot can understand people's life scenes and engage in "work" such as nursing, cooking, and accompanying communication.

Zeng Xuezhong, senior vice president of Xiaomi Group, said that humanoid robots are the intersection of the three core capabilities of technology, manufacturing and service, and are also the commanding heights of the integration of software and hardware and AI technology, which has a huge role in promoting the upgrading of manufacturing and service industries. Combined with the needs of Xiaomi's business development, Xiaomi humanoid robots cut into the field of intelligent manufacturing.

Huang Xiaoqing, founder and CEO of Cloudminds Robotics, said that intelligent robots can also be built into a cloud-network integration computing system and communication system.

Soochow Securities said that with Tesla's release of humanoid robot products last year, the commercialization of humanoid robots accelerated. Under the benchmarking role of Tesla's humanoid robot, it is expected that the world will initially commercialize humanoid robots in 2025, achieving sales of 20,000-30,000 units. By 2030, 1 million new units will be needed, and sales are expected to exceed 10 million units in 2035.

It's still in the early stages of development

Industry insiders said that the current humanoid robot industry is still in the early stage of development, and the technical routes of each company are different, such as whether the feet of humanoid robots are bipedal or two-wheeled, and companies will make choices based on their own technical advantages and future application scenario positioning. The humanoid robot industry has not yet formed a complete business ecology.

Yao Zhizhi said that artificial intelligence technology still faces three challenges in the application of embodied humanoid robots: the lack of a unified dedicated underlying large model, insufficient computing power, and insufficient multi-mode sensory integration.

Wang Xingxing, founder and CEO of Unitree Technology, said that whether it is hardware or software, the current level of humanoid robot technology still has a lot of room for exploration. For example, in terms of perception ability, more reliable sensing equipment is needed at the hardware level, and the current general large model for humanoid robots is still at the starting line of environmental cognition and perception, and it is necessary to "simulate first" and train new models for the dynamic data set of the robot. "At the current rate of technological development, there could be significant progress in a decade." Wang Xingxing said.

"In addition, there are still technical bottlenecks in hardware that want to achieve high levels of power, speed and precision while taking into account low costs, and software control algorithms to improve generalization, sophistication and safety." Chen Jianyu said.

Zheshang Securities said that from the perspective of basic performance, the leading manufacturers of domestic humanoid robots are at the same level as Tesla in terms of freedom and weight, and even some manufacturers can achieve more freedom and lighter weight than Tesla Optimus. However, at present, the leading manufacturers of domestic humanoid robots still have a certain gap with Tesla in terms of battery life.

Xu Xiaolan said that the development momentum of the mainland robot industry is strong, the industrial scale has ranked first in the world, the basic core technology continues to make breakthroughs, and artificial intelligence has entered the first echelon in the world, laying a solid foundation for the development of the humanoid robot industry. "The Ministry of Industry and Information Technology gives full play to the advantages of complete manufacturing categories, rich application scenarios, and large market scale, and adheres to the engineering path of application traction, machine driven, software and hardware collaboration, and ecological construction, and promotes the high-level development of humanoid robot technology and industry."