The Heart of the Machine Original
Author: Wu Xin
On December 29, the last trading day of 2023, UBTECH, a Shenzhen-based humanoid robot company, was officially listed on the Hong Kong Stock Exchange. On the first day of listing, the stock price rose to HK$93.45, with a market capitalization of nearly HK$39 billion.
At the listing ceremony, Panda Robot Youyou walked on the stage and handed the gong hammer to Zhou Jian, the founder, chairman and CEO of UBTECH, and UBTECH's new generation of industrial humanoid robot Walker S made its debut, holding another gong and hammer to the center of the stage and ringing the opening gong with Zhou Jian.
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First, it is difficult to manufacture the ontology of humanoid robots. To work in robotics, you need to be a robotics company with a large group of people building robots. "It's all or nothing. There is no middle way. OpenAI Chief Scientist Ilya Sutskever talks about why they're dropping robotics.
At present, there are only a handful of companies in the world that have announced the launch of commercial humanoid robots, and there are no A-share and Hong Kong-listed humanoid robots without OEMs. UBTECH is one of them, and it is also one of the very few companies in the world that has the full-stack technical capabilities of humanoid robots.
The second is the difficulty of commercialization. In the early stage of technological exploration and development of humanoid robots in the world, UBTECH has taken the lead in realizing the commercial implementation of humanoid robots.
"UBTECH is not the first to make humanoid robots, but it is the first humanoid robot company to industrialize core technologies (including joints), earlier than Musk. Xia Zuoquan, co-founder of BYD, chairman of Zhengxuan Investment, and director of UBTECH, said, "In the past, some Japanese and American companies were doing it, but they failed to stick to it." ”
Representatives of the Hong Kong SAR Government and the Hong Kong Stock Exchange attended UBTECH's listing ceremony.
1. Upstream: "Brain" accelerates
In Beijing, the exhibiting robots of the 2023 World Robot Conference have also changed from the monotony of the previous editions, and a hundred flowers are blooming, and the booth of humanoid robots is surrounded by audiences.
In the past 6-8 months, a large number of new humanoid robot companies have emerged. Developers are in a fierce competition to bring the most attractive and capable agents to market.
This kind of pomp and circumstance is difficult to imagine when Zhou Jian, a post-70s generation, founded UBTECH in 2012. At the time, the most well-known humanoid robot on the market was the belt-driven Honda ASIMO.
In 2016, UBTECH established a project to develop and build a Walker prototype, and the AI wave represented by deep learning Xi also kicked off. Under the weak AI framework, it is difficult for robots to do tasks that involve complex intent recognition and require common sense and logical reasoning, and the convenience it can bring to users is limited.
Robot vacuum cleaners were the most common specialized robots at the time. If you want a robot to clean your home before you leave work at half past five, your instructions must be clear, short, and single-minded. For example, the bedroom is cleaned at 4:35 p.m. and the living room is cleaned at 5 p.m. sharp.
Although the perception and motor ability can be improved through hardware upgrades, the function is still single, and the development of limbs cannot make up for the lag in the development of the "brain".
At the beginning of the investment, the concept of commercialization of humanoid robots was relatively vague, including how to land and application scenarios. At that time, the investment was more about thinking that the general trend was right. Xia Zuoquan said that he invested in UBTECH in the angel round and has held it so far.
After the breakthrough of generative AI based on large language models (LLMs), the evolution of the "brain" of humanoid robots has also begun to advance rapidly.
In March of this year, OpenAI invested in 1X Technologies, a company that develops humanoid robots.
Humans live in a physical world, and we want things to happen in the physical world. At some point, reasoning machines need to bypass the middleman and interact directly with physical reality. If you think of AGI as something that only exists in the cloud and humans are its hands, OpenAI CEO Sam Altman said, "It doesn't seem right." ”
Google's DeepMind is already working on how to combine Gemini with robotics. CEO Demis Hassabis said that the new multimodal model will also be the basis for rapid innovation in physical robots.
The humanoid robot integrated with UBTECH's self-developed "humanoid robot multimodal interaction system", the Agility Robotics bipedal robot Digit equipped with LLM, and Google's DeepMind Robotics Transformer 2 (TR-2) have vividly demonstrated this possibility.
UBTECH Panda Robot appeared at the 2023 World Robot Conference and interacted with the audience
Digit will place "Darth Vader's lightsaber-colored box on the tallest tower in front". TR-2 will have robots "pick up bags that are about to fall off the table" and "move extinct animals to a 2 plus 1 marker object".
These robots know how to go online and learn something they don't know, such as lightsabers, dinosaurs and even superstars, and then correctly identify targets, and can plan a series of steps and turn them into phased instructions that the robot can understand, and make actions to complete the task.
In particular, in order to complete the task, the robot needs to correctly understand the "tallest tower in front", "extinct animal", "sum of 2 plus 1", which all involve reasoning skills.
For example, UBTECH's panda robot can understand the meaning of fire and deduce the content of "vitamin supplementation is needed to relieve symptoms", and ask users whether they want to eat fruit based on the common sense learned, and RT-2 can choose dinosaurs from lions, whales and dinosaurs, realizing the leap from "extinct animals" to "dinosaurs".
All of this – comprehension of more complex natural language commands, symbolic comprehension, some reasoning, and human recognition – is a manifestation of the "brain" thinking ability of humanoid robots.
"I've been asked what is the most important thing in 2024 besides LLMs? Jim Fan, an AI scientist at NVIDIA, predicts that "we are about 3 years away from the ChatGPT moment of the AI agent in its physical form." ”
Artificial general intelligence is advancing much faster than expected, and some top roboticists and company leaders who are skeptical of humanoid robots and legged robots as too sensational and inefficient are beginning to re-examine their judgments.
"When I founded FigureAI in 2022, I believed that humans had reliable human-like hardware long before they could run reliable real-world neural networks on robots. "Training a robot to do household chores can take up valuable time. Brett Adcock, founder of FigureAI, recently said on the social platform.
Like Agility Robotics CEO Damion Shelton, Brett Adcock has changed his mind over the past few months. With reliable hardware, it's also possible to run reliable AI, he said, "2014 will be the year of embodied AI." ”
In addition to the "brain", there are several extremely key parts of the industrial chain of humanoid robots, including the cerebellum (referring to the coordination of vision, touch and other perceptions, gait control and the completion of complex tasks, etc.) and the ontological hardware as a "limb". These have come a long way.
Benefiting from the spillover effect of China's 3C, new energy vehicles and domestic robot supply chain advantages, core components no longer constitute a threshold for domestic players to make humanoid robots. Many parts of the robot are universal. For example, joint modules and sensor sets are either common to the consumer end or different models produced by the same manufacturer.
In the field of controller and servo motor, domestic brands can basically achieve domestic substitution.
According to the Sullivan report, UBTECH is the first company in the world to complete the mass production of servo drives from small torque to high torque (torque from 0.2Nm to 200Nm), and is also one of the first companies in the world to commercialize multi-joint service robots equipped with multiple servo drives in the consumer market.
UBTECH's continuous investment in hard-core technology has enabled UBTECH to gain a leading edge in the field of humanoid robots, becoming one of the very few companies in the world with full-stack technical capabilities for humanoid robots.
The data shows that in the three fields of core components, body structure, and drive control, UBTECH's patent applications are the first in China and the second in the world.
Since its establishment in 2012, UBTECH has continued to invest in the research and development of core technologies of humanoid robots, and has laid out core technologies such as robot motion planning and control, servo drives, computer vision and voice interaction, and is one of the very few companies in the world with full-stack technical capabilities for humanoid robots.
The development of reducer is the most difficult. Reducers are usually divided into RV reducers and harmonic reducers, which in the past mainly relied on imports, and harmonic reducers have made significant progress in recent years. Suzhou Green Company has mastered a number of core technologies of harmonic reducer.
As for batteries, Bechmark Mineral Intelligence says China will have 69% of the world's battery production capacity by 2030. No matter how much Europe and the U.S. spend trying to catch up, China's dominance in batteries will continue for the foreseeable future.
2. Downstream: Flows into the great rivers of manufacturing
Approaching the neatly displayed factory shelves, UBTECH Walker X takes on a new challenge:
After identifying the parts that need to be picked, it uses 3D depth information to detect the precise 6D pose of the object and find the gripping position with the highest success rate. After planning the grabbing path independently, the grabbing was successfully completed with a pair of skillful hands.
WalkerX uses 6D pose recognition technology in smart factory scenarios
UBTECH WalkerX performs SPS intelligent sorting in smart factory scenarios.
Then, with an even step, the Walker X delivers the picked parts to the waiting AGV. The linkage is natural and smooth, and there is no need to make changes to the existing environment.
Walker X can also move the robot vacuum cleaner to the target location with both hands like a human, and press the start button with a single finger to perform an aging test on the robot vacuum.
"A lot of people will ask me why I can't use a wheeled chassis with a body and two arms in an industrial scenario, isn't it easier to achieve?
To create a flexible factory, in an ergonomic situation, feet may be the best solution. Zhou Jian said at the forum of the 2023 World Robot Conference.
As the "brain" becomes more powerful, robot programming becomes very simple.
At present, the task-level interaction between cobots and industrial robots, such as the description and disassembly of tasks, and the translation into programming languages, still need to be completed by professional engineers. Robots can only autonomously complete loops of control, execution, and feedback.
With the large model, ordinary users can directly interact with the robot at the task level - as long as they follow certain prompts to input natural language, the robot can directly translate into instructions that the robot can execute. The user base has also changed from professional engineers to a broader general group.
Xiong Youjun, CTO of UBTECH, said in the forum of the 2023 World Robot Conference that humanoid robots also have stronger decision-making ability, dexterous hands have stronger grasping ability, and can also replace different fixtures to complete different types of work, which can cover almost all non-standard tasks that humans can do.
Zhou Jian believes that humanoid robots have now entered the stage of industrialization. Intelligent manufacturing will become the first large-scale application field of humanoid robots. In 2023, UBTECH also launched a new generation of humanoid robot for the industrial field, Walker S, which is expected to be commercialized as soon as 2024.
In addition to UBTECH, in April, Alibaba also connected the Qianwen model to industrial robots. The main scenario setting of Xiaomi robots in the future is the intelligent manufacturing of Xiaomi factories. Both Zhiyuan Robotics and Unitree Technology plan to take the lead in applying their first humanoid robots to industrial manufacturing, such as new energy and 3C.
Why industrial manufacturing, why new energy and 3C?
In his best-selling book Guns, Germs, and Steel, the famous American evolutionary biologist Red Diamond argues that the current geographical inequality in economic development and the distribution of global wealth can largely be explained by the initial environmental conditions that led to domestication.
By analogy with this logic, how far and how deep the humanoid robot industry can go is also closely related to the initial environmental conditions. The most important initial condition for China, the biggest national condition (and the biggest difference between us and the United States), is that the manufacturing industry is still one of the most important driving forces of China's economic growth, and it is also the great river into which advanced technology will eventually converge.
Ren Zhengfei once said that the direct contribution of AI software platform companies to human society may be less than 2%, and 98% is the promotion of industrial and agricultural society.
According to the communiqué of the fourth China Economic Census, in addition to agriculture, forestry, animal husbandry and sideline fishery, the manufacturing industry ranked second with 18.1%.
For comparison, according to 2020 data, the manufacturing sector accounts for only 10.8% of the U.S. economy, while the tertiary industry accounts for more than 81.5%, of which the financial sector accounts for 8.2%.
In addition, about 18% of the Chinese population is employed in the manufacturing industry. The proportion is around 20% in Germany and 17% in Japan. About 10% of the U.S. workforce is employed in manufacturing.
From the perspective of subdivided industries, in addition to textiles, garments, and apparel industries, computer, communication and other electronic equipment manufacturing industries are also relatively large manufacturing areas. In addition, there is another subdivision that has to be mentioned - new energy vehicle manufacturing.
The automotive industry can be described as one of the important driving forces for the development of industrial robots. Historically, Japan and Europe will become industrial robot powerhouses and large factories, and a very important factor is that they have a developed automobile industry. Japan is a big country in robotics, and the automobile, electronics, and automation industries are also relatively developed.
Munger once said before his death that Wang Chuanfu was better at manufacturing than Musk. BYD is a miracle. In fact, an important factor driving cobot startups to go public in 2023 is the rise of new car manufacturers.
New energy vehicles are all Chinese brands, and they are more open to the domestic supply chain, and will further accelerate the application of humanoid robots.
In addition, compared with traditional industrial robots, humanoid robots combined with AI are like another track, just like Tesla is to traditional fuel vehicles, there is an opportunity to change lanes and overtake.
Xiong Youjun has previously said that in terms of industrial application, the mainland's humanoid robot has a certain industrial base, and there is no "generational difference" compared with the technology and application of humanoid robots in other countries.
In the "Humanoid Robot Technology Patent Analysis Report" recently released by the People's Daily Online Research Institute, China is the country with the largest number of applications for humanoid robot technology patents in the world, with a cumulative number of applications reaching 6,618, and has become the "main force" of global innovation in humanoid robots.
In terms of patent applicants, UBTECH is the enterprise with the largest number of effective humanoid robot technology patents in the world, ranking first in China and second in the world in terms of effective invention patents, with an average annual number of nearly 200 patents in the past five years, more than Honda, Toyota, Boston Dynamics and other companies, ranking first in the world.
From 2020 to 2022, UBTECH's R&D expenditure accounted for more than 50% of annual revenue on average.
At present, UBTECH has built the Agent intelligent simulation system UNDERS2 based on the "humanoid robot multi-modal embodied intelligent system", (UBT Next Digital Self-learning Xi Robot Simulation System, UBT Next Digital Educated Robot Simulation System), using a large number of robot data accumulated in the past, combining the idea of strong chemical Xi and the semantics of human feedback in the training process to realize the "human loop".
UNDERS2 The intelligent simulation system has greatly accelerated the realization of embodied intelligence, especially in industrial scenarios.
For example, with the help of this intelligent system, the humanoid robot can build a semantic map based on the perception information in industrial scenarios, accurately judge the working environment, and combine with the related products of UBTECH's smart logistics business to efficiently and accurately complete various tasks in industrial scenarios.
At the official listing ceremony of the Hong Kong Stock Exchange, Zhou Jian said in an interview with the media that industrial humanoid robots are expected to be large-scale in three years. At present, UBTECH has cooperated with a number of leading enterprises of new energy vehicles to plan the application of humanoid robots in manufacturing scenarios in three stages.
In the first phase (2023-2024), the new energy vehicle manufacturing scenario will be used as the entry point of humanoid robots in industrial scenarios, and the testing of humanoid robots in industrial scenarios such as handling and coating will be realized.
In the second phase (2025-2027), UBTECH's humanoid robots will be gradually expanded to medium-difficulty tasks, focusing on creating applications in 3-5 dedicated scenarios, gradually realizing large-scale commercialization, and horizontally expanding to other industries and application scenarios such as consumer electronics manufacturing.
In the third stage (2028-2033), UBTECH's humanoid robots will be further expanded to more complex task scenarios, with more than 10+ skills, and become multi-task general-purpose industrial humanoid robots.
3. Greater vision: for happiness, enter thousands of households
In the long run, the scenario opportunities for robots are diversified.
At the beginning of UBTECH's establishment, the blueprint of the humanoid robot depicted by Zhou Jian was to go into thousands of households and accompany you to watch ball games, play games, and do housework.
Musk has also set his sights on thousands of households on the planet. In his vision, the Optimus could be an industrial robot or a home service robot, such as cooking, mowing the lawn, and caring for the elderly.
Based on this calculation, humanoid robots will be a market with more development potential than electric vehicles. In the future, the ratio of humanoid robots to humans is 2 to 1, and the demand for humanoid robots is as high as 20 billion units.
"Now, the commercial landing and application scenarios of humanoid robots have been more certain. With the passage of time, Xia Zuoquan's concept of commercialization of humanoid robots is no longer vague. Based on years of experience in the industrial sector, "I think there were actually some applications of AI in the industrial sector at that time, especially in automobiles. Therefore, I judge that there will be more applications of AI in life and business. ”
However, the most difficult part of the robot landing and promotion to the actual application scenario is also in the family scene.
At present, the scenarios where robots are easier to land are concentrated in more standardized scenarios. For example, the first application scenario of Musk's humanoid robot is in the factory office, and the environment is relatively structured and will not be very different.
The home scenario is the least standardized scenario, and the requirements for the hardware and software of the robot are very high.
For example, to improve the adaptability of robots in non-structural environments, to be able to go up and down stairs and over various unexpected obstacles on the ground, breakthroughs in environmental perception and semantic understanding are also needed.
When encountering a large volume of obstacles or garbage, how can the humanoid robot automatically detect and recognize it, and then use its hands to push away or grab the target?
Optimus 2 weighs 10 kg less than the first generation, Figure 01 is also known for its lightness, how to solve the problem that excessive weight may cause a strong impact on people, and better interact and integrate with humans?
In addition to the challenges of technical latitude, there are also issues of cost and price.
When Dyson first developed the digital motor, it was more than five times more expensive than a conventional motor because the electronic circuitry was too expensive. It wasn't until the cost of the new technology came down that they deployed digital motors to all of their vacuum cleaner products. Once sold for millions of dollars and had limited uses, drones were widely used in photography, industry, agriculture, logistics, aerial surveying and other fields when developers found a way to use multiple cooperative rotors to hover small aircraft.
In order for the Optimus to be priced at less than $20,000, cheaper than a car, Musk is urging engineers to work to reduce the robot's power consumption and the number of parts.
Due to their high cost, new technologies are often the first to be implemented in the industrial and commercial sectors where they can afford the high cost. UBTECH has reduced the cost of the large humanoid robot Walker to less than $100,000, and the commercial service has become the fastest scenario for the humanoid robot to land.
In 2022, UBTECH's large-scale humanoid robot Walker X landed in NEOM New Future City in Saudi Arabia, becoming the first generation of large-scale humanoid robot citizens to provide intelligent services. In science and technology exhibition halls such as the China Science and Technology Museum, UBTECH's large-scale humanoid robots are also undertaking functions such as guided tours and performances to promote popular science education on artificial intelligence and robots.
According to the prospectus, the contribution of the humanoid robot business to UBTECH's operating income continues to increase, contributing 7.24 million yuan in revenue in the first six months of 2023, a significant increase over the same period of the previous year. In 2022, the humanoid robot business contributed 51.84 million yuan in revenue, a year-on-year increase of more than three times, accounting for 5.1% of the company's overall revenue, a significant increase compared with 2020 and 2021.
Thanks to the high technical barriers of humanoid robots, the humanoid robot-related business maintained a gross profit margin of more than 50% in both 2022 and the first six months of 2023. At the same time, behind UBTECH's various business modules (artificial intelligence education, smart logistics, smart health care, commercial services, and consumer business), the full-stack technology of humanoid robots is also playing an important supporting role.
Zhou Jian believes that the home landing scene is the most potential application market for humanoid robots. In the process of empowering all walks of life, the "brain", "cerebellum" and "limbs" of humanoid robots will continue to evolve, and the cost will continue to decrease, and eventually evolve into the ultimate version of many current household smart products and play a role in all aspects of human life.
The Ministry of Industry and Information Technology recently issued the "Guiding Opinions on the Innovation and Development of Humanoid Robots", which also lists "people's livelihood" as one of the main directions for expanding application scenarios. Zhou Jian made a judgment on this: when humanoid robots enter the home, they will take two steps.
First enter the family with the role of "companion", and the companion function will be implemented first, and then the service function will be implemented. Now the robot has the ability to understand and decompose complex tasks and finally plan and execute, once there is a breakthrough in the movement ability, it will enter this stage.
According to Caixin, UBTECH is also actively preparing a family companion humanoid robot product to test the application needs of family scenarios. The bot will have features such as chat, emoji responses, and the goal is to bring the robot's skin to human body temperature, and a beta version is in development.
Fourth, the east wind rises
Before his death, Munger answered questions about robotics and AI at Berkshire-Hathaway's annual shareholder meeting, responding that robots will become more widely used around the world.
In his last in-depth talk show before his death, he said that China's economic prospects for the next 20 years are better than any other large economy.
China is aiming at the "industry of the future" in 2024 to promote high-quality enhancement of the economy. Humanoid robots that integrate advanced technologies such as artificial intelligence, high-end manufacturing, and new materials are expected to become disruptive products after computers, smartphones, and new energy vehicles, profoundly changing human production and lifestyle, and reshaping the global industrial development pattern.
On the supply side, the state's support for the humanoid robot industry has been increasing. Beijing, Shenzhen, and Shanghai have also successively issued industrial support policies to promote the innovation and development of humanoid robots.
At the beginning of November, China's first provincial-level humanoid robot innovation center was officially established in Beijing, planning to carry out five key tasks such as the prototype of the general humanoid robot ontology and the general large model of the humanoid robot.
On the demand side, China already has the world's largest consumer market for robots.
From an overall perspective, once the ecology is built, new species will eventually be bred - China is very promising to run a group of humanoid robot companies based in the world.
The official listing is the starting point for UBTECH to leap into the sea of stars. Starting next year, we may see humanoid robots go out into the world and into everyday life, helping humans go farther and farther.