With the continuous progress of technology, the industrial application of humanoid robots has also begun to accelerate.
Recently, the General Office of the Shanghai Municipal People's Government issued the "Shanghai Action Plan for Promoting the Upgrading of the Industrial Service Industry (2024-2027)", proposing to promote the deep integration of artificial intelligence and manufacturing, create a national humanoid robot manufacturing innovation center, and create a number of humanoid robot empowerment manufacturing application scenarios in the fields of automobiles, electrical equipment production and parts processing, and form robot production solutions.
As early as the beginning of this year, the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology and other seven departments jointly issued the "Implementation Opinions on Promoting the Innovation and Development of Future Industries", focusing on breakthroughs in key technologies, cultivating key products, and expanding scenario applications.
At the end of March, at the 2024 Shanghai Global Investment Promotion Conference, Shanghai released investment opportunities in key industrial chain segments, and proposed a plan to achieve large-scale application demonstration of 1,000 humanoid robots within three years guided by "application traction and scenario driven". Relying on the humanoid robot manufacturing innovation center, we will create an innovation ecology integrating technology research and development, achievement incubation, talent cultivation and platform support, and accelerate the industrialization process of humanoid robots.
At the beginning of July, at the World Artificial Intelligence Conference, Zhuang Mudi, Deputy Secretary-General of the Shanghai Municipal People's Government, once again emphasized that the humanoid robot industry is a key area for Shanghai's innovation and development, and the Shanghai Municipal Government will continue to optimize the innovation ecology and support the research and development of core technologies and industrial agglomeration to achieve the high-quality development of the humanoid robot industry. It is hoped that experts and developers will actively contribute their wisdom and jointly shape Shanghai's leading position in the field of humanoid robots.
The development path of humanoid robots is becoming clearer and clearer, which application scenarios will be the first to land? And which industries are expected to benefit from humanoid robots in the future?
Behind the scenes: critical to scale
Yang Zhengye, director of the market system of the National and Local Humanoid Robot Innovation Center (hereinafter referred to as the "National and Local Innovation Center"), said in an interview with the surging news reporter that now is the era of "technology is king", so we must develop the humanoid robot industry. At present, there is a gap in technology, including data, software development, some high-end scientific research facilities and equipment, etc., the establishment of the national and local innovation center, that is, in order to accumulate resources through national strength and solve the problem of the initial stage of the humanoid robot industry, "we can't catch up with the vertical time axis, so we can accumulate resources together through the horizontal and the strength of the whole country."
National and local co-construction of humanoid robot innovation center open source general humanoid robot public version machine "Qinglong"
In May this year, the National Innovation Center was inaugurated in Shanghai. In June, the center set up a humanoid robot industry fund, with an estimated total amount of more than 10 billion yuan, and is building a training ground in Pudong that can accommodate 100 humanoid robots for intelligent training, and the first phase of construction will be completed in November; It is expected that by 2027, the training ground will be expanded to be able to accommodate 1,000 humanoid robot training.
Yang Zhengye believes that the development of humanoid robots requires the improvement of artificial intelligence and industrialization. At present, artificial intelligence technology has reached the application stage, and the level of industrialization and material science have also met the development needs of humanoid robots. The brain of the humanoid robot is its core, which determines its thinking and logical ability, and the current domestic hardware manufacturing capacity is stronger than the accumulation of brain technology. Despite the bottlenecks, it is possible to customize hardware and software to meet specific needs and achieve applications in specific scenarios.
Shanghai robot company Fourier Intelligence told the surging news reporter that the landing of application scenarios is crucial to the formation of mature large-scale robot production and service, and after the action plan is proposed, we can see more good policies to support the development of the humanoid robot industry, and feel excited and encouraged.
The founder of a humanoid robot company that has been settled in Shanghai for many years also expressed similar views in an interview with The Paper. He believes that at present, there is still a gap in the brain AI ability of domestic humanoid robots, and we must have the courage to catch up, but in terms of humanoid robot ontology and cerebellar motion control, there is no generation difference between China and United States, "The humanoid robot industry has just begun, and the competition in the future will be extremely fierce." Whether it is a large factory giant or a start-up company, it may find a direction here, not exactly competition, but also to form a huge ecology, so that the industry can reach a new height."
Zhou Jian, the founder of UBTECH, also said in a recent interview: "Hardware is never the threshold, it is the form of hardware as a terminal that generates the collected future data, and provides better services and content after a more accurate definition of user portraits, which is the threshold." That's the difference between Nokia and Apple. ”
Zhou Jian said that the threshold of hardware is only the threshold of time, it is not the threshold of the bottom layer, and the threshold of the ecology behind it is the largest. The most important thing is to be able to quickly find and meet the corresponding needs in different subdivision scenarios.
Application scenario logic: Structured scenarios are tried first, and data is accumulated and then intelligently improved
A number of humanoid robot companies have told The Paper that the target scenarios of humanoid robots will mainly focus on high-risk and high-intensity scenarios such as industrial special industries, commercial scenarios, and nursing scenarios such as elderly care and childcare.
Chen Jianyu, assistant professor at Tsinghua Institute for Interdisciplinary Information Sciences and founder of Xingdong Era, said that the reason why industrial scenarios were chosen was because the human factor could be put aside, and people would bring the greatest uncertainty and exert their capabilities in relatively limited, structured and predictable scenarios.
Ji Chao, chief scientist of iFLYTEK Robotics, told the surging news reporter that the application scenarios of humanoid robots will first start from manufacturing scenarios such as automobile manufacturing, vehicle assembly, logistics sorting, etc., which are repetitive and cumbersome or dangerous, and are not particularly complex and do not require high precision.
UBTECH Walker S Humanoid Robot "Internship" in the Car Factory
It can be seen that domestic humanoid robots have indeed entered the industrial manufacturing and service industry scenes.
In the past year, UBTECH, the "first share of humanoid robots", has successively reached cooperation with NIO, Dongfeng Liuzhou, Beijing and FAW-Volkswagen and other car factories to enter the factory to complete assembly, testing and other work, as well as the exploration of highly intelligent and flexible production lines and automobile super unmanned factories; The humanoid robot of Fourier Intelligent has also entered the Shanghai branch of China Construction Bank, and cooperated to build a commercial bank scenario application training base, where the robot completes simple dialogue communication and number picking up in the lobby, and also starts "internship" at the SAIC-GM plant to carry out the installation of live high-voltage parts and high-precision operation.
UBTECH said that through the deployment and application of humanoid robots in the real car-making environment, it can continuously accumulate total factor production data, use AI technology to perceive, learn, and iterate to realize the closed loop of intelligent management, and quickly adapt to new task requirements based on the autonomous learning ability of humanoid robots embodied intelligence, and provide agile deployment in manufacturing scenarios. At the same time, the automobile manufacturing industry is large-scale and highly automated, and the willingness to introduce humanoid robots is relatively strong.
Yang Zhengye told reporters that humanoid robots are mobile and versatile, and are suitable for application in factories. Humanoid robots are part of embodied intelligence and can be extended to other areas in the future. "Because the scene is fixed, the work of the scene is fixed. For these scenarios, we can do customized hardware and software, try first in some fields, and then feed back the data and technology obtained from it to the general humanoid robot, and eventually become the closest assistant of humans. ”
A person in charge of the application of industrial humanoid robots told The Paper reporter that the purpose of letting humanoid robots into the factory is to cultivate humanoid robots with technical capabilities, and developers and users work together to conduct preliminary technical verification in the scene. From the perspective of the industrial field, the ability of AI software such as the brain and cerebellum of humanoid robots is more important, and the service industry will have higher fault tolerance and acceptance than the industrial field.
What other scenarios can we expect after industrial application?
The relevant person in charge of MindMinds Robot believes that humanoid robots will be implemented quickly in the fields of scientific research and medical treatment. The relevant personnel of Leju Robot also said that the target scenarios of the company's humanoid robots are university scientific research, traffic persuasion, exhibition hall guidance, family services, etc.
Gu Jie, founder and CEO of Fourier Intelligence, previously said in an interview with The Paper reporter that humanoid robots are very good representatives of new quality productivity, which can lead the new industrial revolution and future trends, and "the Chinese humanoid robot industry has great advantages in supply chain, mass production capacity and scene landing."
He believes that in scenarios such as elderly care and rehabilitation, inspection, etc., there is a huge possibility of landing application for humanoid robots. Shanghai focuses on artificial intelligence, superimposes the advantages of the original large model and robots, and has certain advantages in the development of humanoid robots.
The founder of the above-mentioned Shanghai humanoid robot company also told the surging news reporter that the development of Shanghai's humanoid robot industry has three advantages: talent, industrial chain and internationalization. Shanghai's talent density is very high, with many talents in mechanical, electronic, algorithm, software, design, etc., which can meet the needs of enterprises for top engineers; At the same time, it has a very complete industrial chain, and has a good foundation for consumer electronics and AI industries such as new energy vehicles, large models, and computing power centers. In addition, Shanghai's international advantages can help products enter the global market faster.
Fourier intelligent humanoid robot during the Artificial Intelligence Conference
At the same time, Yang Zhengye said that the focus of society and capital is also the key to promoting technological development. For example, open-source platforms can reduce investment in basic research and help technicians achieve breakthroughs on higher platforms. Policy support and more developers and talent training, is conducive to the rapid iteration of technology, in addition to the policy of humanoid robots for land, financial subsidies, talent incentives and other support, but also focus on guiding the development of the industry.
In the view of Lu Kunlun, executive director of Huaye Tiancheng, the investor, the combination of policies and market rules can truly promote industrial development. From the perspective of the entire industrial chain, the imagination space of humanoid robots is very large and the ceiling is also very high. In the future, there will be three stages of industrialization, the first stage, the robot will do some semi-structured work in a semi-open scene; The second stage is a more generalized commercial scenario; The third stage is when you really go into the family.