An orange reflects the rivers and lakes of the humanoid robot "sword light and sword shadow".

Yuan Jingxian, chief reporter of Shenzhen Business Daily Reading and Innovation Client

On April 16, two new developments were made in Shenzhen in one day: the Guangdong Embodied Intelligent Robot Innovation Center was established in Shenzhen, and at the Baidu AI Developer Conference, UBTECH's humanoid robot Walker S equipped with AI brains made its offline debut.

The conference attracted much attention, and Baidu founder Robin Li received the oranges handed by Walker S. An orange reflects not only the innovative application of AI large model + humanoid robot, but also conveys that with the development of AI, humanoid robots are the best carrier of embodied intelligence.

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The giant crosses the Fengrong humanoid robot track

Since the beginning of this year, the humanoid robot industry seems to be calm on the surface, but in fact, it is turbulent behind it. At this critical moment, which is known as the first year of commercialization of humanoid robots, who can sit in the technology, scene, and market is likely to directly affect the "right to speak" in the future.

Every move of the industry giants is the best glimpse of the industry trend. On March 19, NVIDIA CEO Jensen Huang officially unveiled Project GR00T, a universal base model for humanoid robots, and Jetson Thor, a new humanoid robot computer based on NVIDIA Thor system-on-chip (SoC), at the 2024 GTC conference. Huang said the next generation of robots could be humanoids, as more mimic training data is available to similarly constructed robots.

Recently, Mark Gurman, a well-known Apple whistleblower, said on social platforms that several teams at Apple are researching and promoting personal robotics technology, and this field has the potential to become one of Apple's "next major projects". Two months ago, when Apple announced that it was abandoning car building, CEO Tim Cook said that he would disclose more AI plans later this year. In this way, the humanoid robot track is expected to become Apple's next focus.

On April 1, Baidu announced that it would cooperate with UBTECH to allow Walker S to access the Wenxin model to upgrade and train embodied intelligent applications and expand the application scenarios of embodied intelligent technology. Zhou Jian, Chairman of the Board of Directors, Executive Director and Chief Executive Officer of UBTECH, said in an interview with reporters, "Humanoid robots will definitely be one of the biggest beneficiaries in the AI era. ”

Judging from the situation displayed at the Baidu AI Developer Conference, after accessing the Baidu Wenxin model through the Baidu Intelligent Cloud Qianfan AppBuilder platform, Walker S is indeed more "smart", and can understand instructions such as storage and handing fruits, and provide "health tips" for the experiencer to eat oranges according to the situation.

From "no man's land" to "mushrooms"

Before Robin Li, the last time, the hammer handed by the humanoid robot made Zhou Jian ring the first strand of the humanoid robot. At the end of 2023, UBTECH was officially listed on the Hong Kong Stock Exchange, setting a record for the largest IPO in the field of Chinese human robots, and the stock price once broke through the HK$300 mark after the issuance.

12 years ago, when Zhou Jian established UBTECH, humanoid robots were still "no man's land". 12 years later, the growth rate of humanoid robots has sprung up like "mushrooms after a rain", and they are rising everywhere in the "mountain". A few years ago, there were only a handful of companies focusing on humanoid robots, and now looking at this list, internationally, from the giants Tesla, Open AI, Apple, to the start-up Figure, Google DeepMind, from Xiaomi to Baidu, from UBTECH, Yushu to Zhiyuan, Shenzhen Chase Power, cross-border giants are increasing, and companies focusing on humanoid robots are also constantly breaking through and refreshing.

According to the reporter's incomplete statistics, last year, about 20 domestic manufacturers released related products. Prototypes of humanoid robots have been launched one after another, and some robots have even begun to be tested and used in scenarios such as automobile intelligent manufacturing, health care, and logistics.

Among them, Zhiyuan has only been established for one year and has reached a valuation of 7 billion yuan. Its founder is a former Huawei genius boy with both topic and popularity, with more than 2.5 million fans on Station B. In August last year, Zhiyuan launched the expedition A1 Zhiyuan embodied intelligent robot, according to Zhihuijun's vision, A1 was born for the factory, and the future will also enter the family.

It is reported that Zhiyuan will build the first mass production plant for humanoid robots in Shanghai. At the end of February, Zhiyuan disclosed that this year's plan is to use the new generation of products of Yuanzheng A2 and Dust-Absolute C5 to realize the empowerment of industrial and commercial scenarios and achieve commercialization. According to this, it is not impossible to build a mass production plant.

Recently, there is another high-profile humanoid robot company - Shenzhen Chase Momentum. At the beginning of March, the video of the bipedal robot P1 hiking in the wild of Tanglang Mountain attracted widespread attention. Judging from the video, P1 can independently go down gravel slopes, climb grass slopes, walk ditches, etc., in a completely unfamiliar field environment, P1 can be used out of the box, and go to the ground.

Looking to the future, it is obvious that the track of humanoid robots will continue to expand.

“ Practical training" or the best transcript of the humanoid robot

The successive swarms have brought about an explosion of technology and patents. According to public data, China has become the country with the largest number of effective patents for humanoid robots, with a cumulative number of 6,618 applications, an increase of 25 times in eight years, of which UBTECH also ranks first in the world with 763 effective technology patents for humanoid robots.

The Ministry of Industry and Information Technology's "Guiding Opinions on the Innovation and Development of Humanoid Robots" proposes that as a new highland of scientific and technological competition, humanoid robots are expected to become subversive products after computers, smart phones, and new energy vehicles.

Technological breakthroughs, policy increases, and gradual decline in development costs are all suggesting that the pace of commercialization of humanoid robots is getting closer and closer. UBTECH is the first company in the world to reduce the cost of a bipedal life-size humanoid to less than $1 million, and Musk said Tesla's humanoid robot will eventually cost less than half the cost of a car. Zhihuijun also previously said that the cost of the expeditionary A1 humanoid robot will be further controlled within 200,000 yuan.

In an interview with the media, Zhou Jian said that on the way to reality of humanoid robots, simple hardware or software no longer constitutes the primary obstacle, and the most urgent thing at the moment is to find a cut into the scene, achieve large-scale application, and obtain massive data feedback, so as to promote product iteration and cost reduction.

This also means that whoever finds the entry scenario first and realizes large-scale application is most likely to have commercial competitiveness. At present, 3C, automobile, manufacturing, logistics, business services, etc., are considered to be the first scenarios for humanoid robots to be commercialized in the future, and they are the first choice for the "practical training" of humanoid robots.

Whether this year will be able to pay for the commercial value of humanoid robots, whether the number of swarms will continue to increase in the future, run blindfolded, or calmly stop, the results of "practical training" or the best report card of humanoid robots.