THIS ARTICLE IS SYNTHESIZED BY THE SEMICONDUCTOR INDUSTRY (ID: ICVIEWS).
How to drive smarter robots?
The robot is known as the "pearl at the top of the manufacturing crown", and its R&D, manufacturing and application are important symbols to measure the level of scientific and technological innovation and high-end manufacturing in a country. At present, a new round of scientific and technological revolution and industrial transformation is accelerating, and artificial intelligence (AI), a new generation of information technology, communication technology, new materials, control technology, etc. are deeply integrated with robot technology. As one of the key technologies for digital transformation, the intelligent robot industry is ushering in a window period of upgrading and leapfrogging development.
Recently, at the Songshan Lake China IC Innovation Summit Forum, what kind of chips do robots need? Dai Weimin, Vice Chairman of IC Design Branch of China Semiconductor Industry Association, Founder, Chairman and President of VeriSilicon, Chen Feng, Senior Vice President of Rockchip Microelectronics Co., Ltd., He Yunpeng, Founder and CEO of Chengdu Qiying Tailun Technology Co., Ltd., Shi Qing, General Manager of Shenzhen Yijing Virtual Reality Technology Co., Ltd., Wang Wei, Vice President of Product Marketing of Pengkan Integrated Circuit (Hangzhou) Co., Ltd., Zhang Xiaodong, Chairman of Wuzhen Think Tank, Shending Technology (Nanjing) Yuan Diwen, CEO of Co., Ltd., and Zhang Xiuyun, R&D Director of Xiaomi Ecological Chain, expressed their respective opinions and views, and jointly discussed the development trend of intelligent robot technology and its application prospects in various fields of society.
Dai Weimin: Can we put the brain of the server on the cloud? Some "hands" and "feet" are generally placed on the end, will it be safer and more convenient to put the brain in the cloud?
Chen Feng, senior vice president of Rockchip Microelectronics Co., Ltd., believes that it is not feasible, because the current service robot needs to make real-time perception of the surrounding environment, and if the brain is placed in the cloud, it may encounter the problem of network disconnection, which means that local and end-level computing power is indispensable.
Zhang Xiaodong, chairman of Wuzhen Think Tank, said that from the development process of computers, it can be seen that the computing power that the terminal can carry is limited, and with the development of current technology, how much computing power the terminal can withstand may evolve with the demand.
Dai Weimin: Compared with the non-differentiated multimodal large model, the language-based multimodal large model will become the mainstream. So what are the effects of large models on robots?
Zhang Xiaodong said that if it is said to be extreme, if it is on a large model, it can be said to be a "smart" robot. Before 2020, most people would have hardly imagined that large models could iterate so quickly. The iteration rate of the previous large model was still 40 years, then it became 20 years, 10 years, and now even weeks.
Large models are becoming more and more miniaturized, and in the past one or two years, the technology of quantization and compression can put some large models in mobile phones, so it can be said that there may be some very small large models that can be placed on the end side in the future, so it can be said that there are large models to be said to be "smart" robots.
He Yunpeng, the founder of Qiying Tailun, believes that from the perspective of application, if we want to make a general service robot, we will definitely need a large model, and if we only complete a specific task, the requirements for the model and parameters will not be very large. In addition, the structure of the future model should also be taken into account, at present, it is not possible to say whether the development of the model structure has come to an end, and the future may continue to develop, and at present, we must combine the application and the structure and characteristics of the current large model to develop robots.
Dai Weimin: Do service robots need humanoid forms?
Zhang Xiuyun, R&D director of Xiaomi Ecological Chain, said that humanoid robots are not necessary, and after the evolution of all things, humans are not the most efficient organisms. For example, when climbing a mountain and jumping over obstacles, six feet are much faster than two feet. Therefore, service robots do not have to be humanoid.
Yuan Diwen, chairman of Shending Technology, believes that in recent years, the bionic robot market has received more and more attention, which has a lot to do with large models, the previous large models are mainly general, it needs a lot of data to do training, but now the large models can do a lot of innovative work, and then look at the humanoid robots, the current robots are actually not particularly good in some daily work, and some of the current large model manufacturers are also actively contacting some robot companies. Robots now need large models that can make it capable of human behavior.
Dai Weimin: So, for the intelligent upgrade of robots, what kind of chips do terminals need?
He Yunpeng said that the chip needed by the robot is not a single one or two, it needs the coordination and operation of the entire system, since she is a robot, it can be compared to a human being, the need for brain, limbs, cerebellum and more senses. Therefore, in terms of task division, it needs to be able to establish interaction with humans, to get some indicators and tasks, and it also needs to be broken down into behavioral planning, which is the work of the brain. The cerebellum is responsible for the control of actions, including the behavior control of machines and emergency obstacle avoidance. In addition, robots also need many perception systems, which means that robots need to have sensing chips. In the actual production, we may place the perception chip and the brain chip together to facilitate the interaction and processing of the two, and we also need the generative large model of the brain to assist in the processing. In addition to some brain-like chips, they are also inseparable from the role of some traditional chips, including MCUs.
Dai Weimin: The use of cables in robots may lead to problems such as the weight of robots, so what role can optical fiber play in robots?
Wang Wei, vice president of product marketing of Pengkan integrated circuit, said that our chip solution is to use optical fiber to make the communication network of the chip, we do not use a bundle of optical fibers to replace a bundle of cables, we only need some optical fibers to replace a bundle of cables, now the robot uses cables by default, did not think about making the form of optical fibers, in fact, the cable harness will be subject to great electromagnetic interference in the robot, but optical fiber can efficiently avoid this,
On the other hand, the use of optical fibers can make the overall weight lighter, and its bandwidth is also extremely wide, which can cover the various joints of the robot. In addition to the application of robots, Pengkan integrated circuits are also promoting optical fiber on the car, and has completed the feasibility verification work with the largest domestic car companies, and is negotiating the next step.
Shi Qing, general manager of Yijing Virtual, said that communication itself is a headache, and sometimes the equipment performs well at home and in the laboratory, but it will be interfered with at the booth. Fiber optic technology really needs to be studied carefully, if it performs well in terms of cost, latency, power consumption, etc., then it can have a lot of applications in wearable devices.
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