Humanoid Robots: Need 20 Years Before Growing Up?

21st Century Business Herald that the humanoid robot is a multi-tasking and general-purpose robot platform. In the future, it will have many application scenarios in the fields of industrial production and social services. On the other hand, China has the advantages of accumulating core technologies for humanoid robots, a complete industrial chain system, and a broad consumer market. By 2025, my country will become the source of global robot technology innovation, high-end manufacturing agglomeration and a new highland for integrated applications.

But the track is still on the eve of its launch. Regardless of the industry or outside the industry, it is generally believed that Tesla's robots are far from amazing this time, and there is still a long way to go before the expected humanoid robots. Great Wall Guorui Securities pointed out that due to technical difficulties and high costs, humanoid robots cannot be mass-produced in the short term. Many manufacturers, including Tesla and Boston Dynamics, continue to accumulate technology and product iterations. The commercialization of humanoid robots is expected to accelerate. Xiong Youjun believes that the humanoid robot industry is still in a relatively early stage of development, with huge market potential and a long way to go for commercialization, and there are still many possibilities.

A distant hug On August 19 last year, Musk presented Tesla's next big project: a humanoid robot at the first AI Day, and the concept and video of Optimus were first released. At the earnings conference in January this year, Musk made it clear that developing Optimus Prime is Tesla's most important job this year, and it will be more important and valuable than Tesla's car business in the future. A year later, the formed Optimus Prime made its grand debut on AI Day in 2022. The cables and joints on its body without a casing were clearly visible, and it staggered towards the stage amid cheers, which seemed to be the same as the concept promoted before. It's a far cry. Musk said this is the first time the robot has walked on stage without any mechanical support. It is reported that the robot is 1.72 meters tall and weighs 73 kilograms. It contains a 2.3 kWh battery pack and runs on Tesla's SoC. With information, working all day is almost impossible.

In terms of price, Optimus Prime is expected to sell for less than $20,000, and the cost will be much lower than a Tesla car, which is already a very low price in the industry. Musk said that it is expected to be commercialized in 3 years and 5 years, and there will be millions of robots in the future. However, there are also many people in the industry who take a wait-and-see attitude. It is still unclear whether it is progress or a big cake. "Before mass production, everything is false." Before Tesla, Xiaomi launched its own humanoid robot, CyberOne, in August. The robot is 1.77 meters tall and weighs 52 kilograms. When it debuted, it had a similar situation to Optimus Prime: when it took a flower and took 40 steps toward Lei Jun, 6 meters away Great "Old Man". Perhaps as a freshman "person", it's still a toddler.

However, the technical highlight of this Tieda University is not in physical coordination, but more in emotional perception and visual-spatial system. According to the official introduction, "Tie Da" is equipped with MiAl environmental semantic recognition engine, MiAl speech emotion recognition engine, and powerful audio algorithm, which can recognize 45 kinds of human emotional speech in 6 categories, plus 85 kinds of environmental sounds. In addition, it is also equipped with self-developed Mi-Sense depth vision module, combined with AI interactive algorithm, not only has complete three-dimensional space perception ability, but also can realize character identification, gesture recognition, expression recognition ."I can be happy with you, and I can give you a hug like an old friend when you are lost." This is Xiaomi's introduction to Tie Da. Lei Jun said at the press conference that Tie Da is Xiaomi's exploration of the future technology ecology, and it is also a new achievement of Xiaomi's multi-integrated technology system.

But unfortunately, the cost of Tieda has been as high as 600,000 to 700,000 yuan, and mass production has not yet been achieved. Lei Jun also admitted that in the field of intelligent robots, humanoid bionic robots have the highest degree of technical integration and the most difficulty, and Xiaomi is still in the first stage of its infancy. Whether it is Tesla or Xiaomi, the high-profile entry of giant technology companies has suddenly increased the market's attention to humanoid robots, but the "slightly clumsy" display of its finished products has caused constant suspicion. With the blessing of science fiction movies and books, people's imagination of humanoid robots is far more than just walking and doing a few actions. So now, how long will it take for humanoid robots to "grow up"?