"Humanoid robots are expected to become disruptive products after computers, smart phones, and new energy vehicles, which will profoundly change the production and lifestyle of human beings."
Previously, the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology issued the "Guiding Opinions on the Innovation and Development of Humanoid Robots", which was written at the beginning.
"Humanoid robots" appear side by side with computers, smart phones, and new energy vehicles, which have been deeply integrated into our lives, bringing unlimited imagination.
A few days ago, Tesla released a video of its humanoid robot Optimus Prime (Optimus) "working" in its own factory, which attracted attention. In the video, the Optimus Prime robot takes the battery and puts it in the battery slot and arranges it neatly.
In fact, before this, in February this year, the domestic humanoid robot Walker S had entered the new energy vehicle factory and started a "part-time career". On the assembly line, it can work with humans to complete car assembly and quality inspection operations.
At the end of April, the Beijing Humanoid Robot Innovation Center released the world's first full-scale humanoid robot "Tiangong" with pure electric drive for humanoid running, which can run stably at a speed of 6 km/h.
Humanoid robots are accelerating from sci-fi to reality, but many people are still unfamiliar with them. What is a Humanoid Robot? Where are humanoid robots used, and are they easy to use? How is the development of humanoid robots in mainland China?
01
What is a Humanoid Robot?
To understand humanoid robots, we must start with the concept of "embodied intelligence".
At present, artificial intelligence is on the way to general intelligence, and large models demonstrate the ability to interact with human needs. However, this interaction is still limited to the digital world, which can answer questions and draw, but it cannot help us with household chores or build houses. If we want to interact with artificial intelligence in the real physical world, we need to make artificial intelligence have an intelligent hardware carrier, so that they can perceive, think and act like humans.
In layman's terms, it is to put a "body" on the intelligent "mind" of artificial intelligence. This "body" can be a mobile phone, it can be a self-driving car, and the humanoid robot is a carrier that integrates various core cutting-edge technologies and is a representative product of embodied intelligence.
Humanoid robots themselves are not a new thing, its research and development began in the seventies and eighties of the last century, but because the traditional robot control technology and algorithms are difficult to meet the complex technical requirements of humanoid robots, it has been difficult to apply.
Tan Min, the relevant person in charge of UBTECH, a humanoid robot company, said that the development of artificial intelligence in this round means that the possibility of realizing the truly intelligent robots that everyone sees in imagination or science fiction movies is no longer far in the future, but close at hand.
Specifically, the development of artificial intelligence technology can help humanoid robots understand human language more accurately, listen to human instructions, recognize environmental information, and make more reasonable decisions and actions.
This is the Q series humanoid robot designed and developed by the Institute of Automation of the Chinese Academy of Sciences, when you say to it to pick up a vegetable with the highest starch content from the table, it can accurately pick out the potatoes from many vegetables and put them in the basket.
Wang Xingxing, founder of Unitree Technology, a humanoid robot company, introduced that traditional robots basically complete specific tasks according to programs written by people, which is exclusive, that is to say, a robot can only do one thing. AI-driven humanoid robots, on the other hand, are more intelligent and can perform tasks in a variety of scenarios, greatly improving versatility.
Some people may still have such a doubt, artificial intelligence has such a smart brain, why don't we equip it with a more powerful body, why do we want to make a human form? For example, the rollers are much faster than the legs.
This question is actually quite understandable. The world in which human beings live today has been made suitable for human work and life, and all the tools are designed for human beings. It's true that the wheels are faster than the legs, but what about the steps? In order to use the robot, a ramp is laid at all steps, which is obviously unlikely.
Therefore, only by designing the robot to look like a human and have the ability to move a human can the robot better adapt to the environment and control more tools, so as to be truly versatile. Of course, in addition to this, there is also a psychological factor involved, and humans naturally feel more intimate with the human form.
02
Where are humanoid robots used? Is it easy to use?
When will we be able to use humanoid robots?
UBTECH Walker S, Unitree H1, MindMinds XR-4, Xpeng PX5, Zhiyuan Expedition A1, Fourier GR-1, Xingdong Era "Little Star", Step-by-Eye Power CL-1, Xiaomi CyberOne...... Are these names full of technology? These are all humanoid robots launched by domestic enterprises.
Industry insiders said that at present, humanoid robots are at a critical juncture from the laboratory to industrialization, and 2024 is expected to become the first year of mass production of humanoid robots.
At present, the products of many humanoid robot companies in mainland China have begun to be produced and delivered in small batches, and the customers are mainly university research institutions, artificial intelligence enterprises and intelligent manufacturing enterprises, and some humanoid robots have been commercialized in industrial manufacturing scenarios and commercial service scenarios.
In February this year, the domestic humanoid robot Walker S has begun to work in the new energy vehicle factory for "practical training". It is the world's first humanoid robot to collaborate with humans on the assembly line of an automobile factory to complete automobile assembly and quality inspection operations.
Some people may ask, why not use industrial robotic arms to do these jobs? In fact, with the overall improvement of the automation level of intelligent manufacturing, many process links on the assembly line have been completed by industrial robotic arms, but there are still many tasks that need to be completed manually.
Taking the automobile industry as an example, in the detection link, it is necessary to manually bend down into the car to complete the inspection of seat belts, open parts and other work, these work robotic arms can not be done temporarily, and are currently completed by manual work, and can be handed over to humanoid robots in the future.
UBTECH CEO Zhou Jian has publicly stated that industrial manufacturing, commercial services and home companionship are the three major application scenarios of humanoid robots.
Among them, the more complex environment of home and business scenarios and the flexible and diverse human-computer interaction needs make the large-scale commercialization of humanoid robots uncertain. However, in the field of industrial manufacturing, it has a good commercial foundation, and intelligent manufacturing will become the first large-scale application field of humanoid robots, and industrial humanoid robots are expected to be large-scale within three years.
Wang Xingxing, founder of Unitree Technology, believes that the application scenarios of humanoid robots can be divided into short-term, medium-term and long-term perspectives. In the short term, it is mainly the production and assembly in the factory; In the medium term, it will be extended to households, agriculture, construction sites and other scenarios; In the long run, it can be understood that everything can be done by humanoid robots.
The first step in the application of humanoid robots is to enter thousands of industries, which is already in progress, and is expected to enter thousands of households in the near future.
According to relevant experts from the China Academy of Information and Communications Technology, on the one hand, the problem of population aging in the mainland is gradually emerging, and in the long run, the supply of labor is insufficient, and humanoid robots are needed to supplement the gap. On the other hand, there is a need for humanoid robots to replace work in harsh environments or repetitive, heavy, and dangerous work.
The application scenarios of humanoid robots are very broad, so the next question is, are humanoid robots easy to use? Looking at the slow-moving and slightly clumsy humanoid robot, someone put a question mark in their hearts.
In this regard, Wang Xingxing, founder of Unitree Technology, said that before the emergence of ChatGPT, everyone also felt that AI was not intelligent enough to do anything, which is somewhat similar to the current state of humanoid robots, and many people think that humanoid robots have limited functions and are expensive. But in fact, the humanoid robot is only a little ignited, which is the critical point of the breakthrough of AI technology of the large model of the robot. Of course, it will take some time for the progress of AI technology for large robot models and the industrial deployment of humanoid robots, and it will take 3 to 5 years to make significant progress if it is fast, and it will not exceed 10 years if it is slow. "In 10 years, it will be upside down." He stressed.
Tan Min, the relevant person in charge of UBTECH, also said that you don't have to worry about an innovative product that may be slightly clumsy or have limited application scenarios at the beginning. We must see that it only took more than ten years from the emergence of smartphones to universal application. At present, the development of humanoid robots is also ushering in its own "iPhone moment", artificial intelligence technology is moving towards the key node of general artificial intelligence breakthroughs, and humanoid robots are also developing at an unconventional acceleration, and it is expected that there will be very common applications between 10 and 20 years.
If humanoid robots will be widely used in our lives, price will naturally be a matter of great concern to everyone.
Previously, Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang said that humanoid robots are expected to become popular devices, and the manufacturing cost is expected to be much lower than people's expectations, and the price may not exceed $10,000-20,000, which is comparable to the current price of cheap cars. Musk has also said that Tesla's humanoid robots could cost less than $20,000.
A number of domestic humanoid robot companies also expect that after the market matures in the future, the price of humanoid robots may range from tens of thousands of yuan to hundreds of thousands of yuan.
03
How is the development of humanoid robots in mainland China?
The "Guiding Opinions on the Innovation and Development of Humanoid Robots" issued in 2023 will plan and deploy the development of humanoid robots in the form of a separate document for the first time.
Taking 2025 as the time node, many clear goals have been put forward -
In terms of technology, breakthroughs have been made in a number of key technologies such as "brain, cerebellum and limb" to ensure the safe and effective supply of core components.
In terms of application, the whole machine product has reached the international advanced level, and has achieved mass production, and has been demonstrated and applied in special, manufacturing, people's livelihood services and other scenarios.
So, what is the current development of humanoid robots in mainland China, and what is the level in the world?
A humanoid robot, with thousands of parts and components and a variety of cutting-edge technologies, is one of the most advanced pieces of hardware produced by humans. The "Guiding Opinions on the Innovation and Development of Humanoid Robots" lists key technologies, and you can feel the complexity.
Wang Xingxing, the founder of Unitree Technology, gave a simple and easy-to-understand understanding idea - divided into software and hardware. Hardware is all kinds of commonly used hardware for manufacturing robots, such as controllers, sensors, etc. The software part is more complex, mainly various artificial intelligence models, such as large language models, image diffusion models, etc.
It can be said that the software system is the soul, and the hardware support is the rigid need.
Wang Xingxing believes that at present, the technical level of different countries and different companies is more or less different, but on the whole, the gap is not particularly large. Among them, in terms of software, as far as artificial intelligence technology itself is concerned, our gap is not large, but we need to make up for it in terms of computing chips and AI talent reserves. In terms of hardware, China has more advantages in manufacturing, iteration speed, cost and other aspects.
Many industry insiders also hold a similar view, based on the world's most efficient and largest supply chain system, humanoid robot hardware manufacturing is the mainland's strength.
In April this year, the first Chinese Human Robot Industry Conference opened in Beijing, at which hundreds of enterprises from the upstream and downstream of the industrial chain competed with the latest products, showing that the ecology of the industrial chain is improving day by day.
In addition, Tan Min, the relevant person in charge of UBTECH, believes that based on the huge market and perfect digital and intelligent foundation of the mainland, the mainland has advantages in promoting industrial application and scenario innovation. A typical example is that the QR code was not invented by the mainland, but the mainland has the most extensive and in-depth application of the QR code for commercial innovation. Similarly, the mainland should accelerate the innovative application of humanoid robots in various fields.
The industry report released by the first Chinese Humanoid Robot Industry Conference predicts that the market size of Chinese humanoid robots will reach 2.76 billion yuan in 2024 and is expected to grow into a 100 billion yuan market in 2030, with a market size of 119.246 billion yuan.
The importance of the national strategic level is a strong driving force to lead the accelerated development of the mainland humanoid robot industry. In January this year, the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology, the Ministry of Science and Technology and other 7 departments issued the "Implementation Opinions on Promoting the Innovation and Development of Future Industries", mentioning in the deployment of key tasks that it is necessary to create iconic products and strengthen future high-end equipment. Among them, humanoid robots are in the first place.
The document clearly states that it is necessary to break through the core technologies of robots such as high torque density servo motors, high dynamic motion planning and control, bionic perception and cognition, intelligent dexterous hands, and electronic skins, and focus on promoting the development and application of products in the fields of intelligent manufacturing, home services, and special environmental operations.
Humanoid robots are no longer far away, and some people are worried about whether robots will take away human jobs.
In the view of Tan Min, the relevant person in charge of UBTECH, this question is very simple. "Humanoid robots are not robbing humans of jobs, but replacing humans to do the dangerous, boring, and hard work that humans don't want to do. The productivity revolution will also create a plethora of never-before-seen job opportunities, allowing more people to do more creative work. ”
(CCTV News)