In 2023, generative AI has truly brought artificial intelligence into a phase of deep evolution. Besides the explosive popularity of ChatGPT, humanoid robots have also become a new trend.On August 18, at the 2023 ZhiYuan Embodied Intelligent Robot Launch Conference, ZhiYuan Robotics unveiled the humanoid bipedal robot Expedition A1. At the same time, ZhiYuan Robotics revealed its “working in factories” scenarios, such as assembling chassis in new energy vehicle factories and engaging in close discussions with leading domestic automotive manufacturers.
Image Source: ZhiYuan Robotics Official WebsiteNow, the identity of the leading domestic automotive manufacturer has been revealed to be BYD, a leader in domestic new energy vehicles. Recently, BYD announced an investment of nearly 2 million yuan in humanoid robot company ZhiYuan Robotics, marking BYD’s first bet in the humanoid robot field.In the future, as more domestic and international companies and capital enter the humanoid robot sector, this trend is expected to see an influx of more participants, which will, to some extent, promote AI technology to flourish in various fields of human life and production, ushering us into the “era of artificial intelligence”.Why Did BYD Invest in Humanoid Robots?Recently, ZhiYuan Robotics’ affiliated company, Shanghai ZhiYuan New Technology Co., Ltd. (hereinafter referred to as “ZhiYuan New Technology”), underwent a business change, adding BYD and several other shareholders.The specific financing information shows that BYD’s subscribed capital contribution is 1.91497 million yuan, with a shareholding ratio of 3.76%. After the change, the company’s registered capital increased from 48.470226 million yuan to 50.97376 million yuan. In addition to BYD, other new shareholders in this round of financing include BlueRun Ventures, Wofeng Ventures, and Qiyu Investment.It is reported that ZhiYuan Robotics was established in February this year. Although it has not been long since its establishment, it has already been regarded as a well-known “unicorn” in the industry, with investors including Hillhouse Capital, Baidu Ventures, Qiji Chuangtan, and Matrix Partners China. This round of financing, including BYD, is an A++ round. During the previous A+ round of financing, it was reported that the valuation was around several billion dollars.At the launch conference on August 18, ZhiYuan Robotics showcased the humanoid bipedal robot Expedition A1. This robot stands 175 cm tall, weighs 53 kg, has a maximum walking speed of 7 km/h, features 49 degrees of freedom, can bear a total weight of 80 kg, and has a maximum load of 5 kg per arm. Not only does it resemble humans in form, but the Expedition A1 also demonstrates industry-leading capabilities in bipedal walking, intelligent tasks, and human-robot interaction.
Image Source: ZhiYuan Robotics Official WebsiteThe Expedition A1 demonstrated a humanoid robot’s “super abilities” on-site: stable gait, assembly of 3C products, material handling, and even cracking eggs in a cooking scenario to assist the elderly with medication.It is understood that ZhiYuan Robotics has developed a middleware system for robot operation called AgiROS, which provides multiple language interfaces and is compatible with mainstream ecosystems in a plug-in format, including ROS, ROS2, and cloud service ecosystems like GRPC and HTTP.Notably, in addition to traditional software and hardware capabilities, the Expedition A1 integrates AI large models like WorkGPT, fully utilizing the vast prior knowledge base and strong general understanding capabilities of language and image large models, achieving complex multi-level reasoning capabilities, known as “thinking chains.” This also enables the Expedition A1 to possess intelligent functions such as autonomous environmental perception, task understanding, and action orchestration.Thus, the real logic behind BYD’s layout in humanoid robots is evident: the Expedition A1 can participate in appearance inspection processes and chassis assembly on the assembly line in BYD’s factories.Of course, considering that the biggest competitor, Tesla, has already laid out humanoid robots with “Optimus,” BYD cannot afford to stand by. Furthermore, robots with “brains” will make self-directed decisions based on specific tasks, which may provide insights or even product development possibilities for the future of intelligent driving.“Embodied Intelligence” Has Become a TrendIt is reported that one of the founders of ZhiYuan Robotics is Huawei’s “genius boy”—Zhi Hui Jun. Zhi Hui Jun, originally named Peng Zhihui, is a typical post-90s individual who graduated from the University of Electronic Science and Technology of China. He previously worked at OPPO Research Institute’s AI Lab as an algorithm engineer. In 2020, after seven rounds of interviews, Peng Zhihui successfully joined Huawei as part of the “Genius Boy Program,” becoming an algorithm engineer in Huawei’s Ascend department, focusing on AI edge heterogeneous computing, with an annual salary of one million yuan, gaining significant fame.However, unexpectedly, with a dream of “robots,” Peng Zhihui left Huawei in December 2022. In February 2023, ZhiYuan Robotics was quietly established, with Peng Zhihui serving as Chief Innovation Officer and Chief Technology Officer for humanoid robot product development. Currently, in addition to being one of the co-founders, Peng Zhihui also holds the positions of CTO and Chief Architect, and has recently been appointed as a director.In fact, ZhiYuan Robotics has garnered significant attention from capital and industry giants, proving that as part of the bionic robot industry, the humanoid robot sector is becoming increasingly popular.At the recent World Robot Conference, more and more humanoid robots are capturing the spotlight. It is also worth mentioning that AI large model technology has accelerated the upgrade of the robot “brain,” making it more commercially viable and attracting more investors.On one hand, the strong fitting ability of large models allows humanoid robots to achieve higher accuracy in tasks such as target recognition, obstacle avoidance, 3D reconstruction, and semantic segmentation. On the other hand, large models address the issue of deep learning technology’s excessive reliance on single-task data distribution, which leads to poor scene generalization. General visual large models learn more general knowledge from vast amounts of data and transfer it to downstream tasks, with pre-trained models based on massive data exhibiting better knowledge completeness and enhancing scene generalization.Currently, large models are empowering humanoid robots, enhancing their perception, thinking and decision-making, and action execution capabilities, making them more versatile. It can be said that the emergence of GPT (pre-trained large language models) and humanoid robots marks a significant step towards general artificial intelligence for robots.Previously, NVIDIA CEO Jensen Huang predicted in a speech: “The next wave of artificial intelligence is embodied intelligence.” By definition, “embodied intelligence” refers to an intelligent system or machine that can interact with the environment in real-time through perception and interaction, typically possessing perception, cognition, decision-making, and action capabilities.Currently, whether it is automotive companies like Tesla, Honda, and Toyota, or giants like Huawei, Xiaomi, Samsung, Google, and Amazon, as well as companies like Datarobot, ZhiMi Technology, Yushu Technology, Fourier Intelligence, Xiaopeng Motors, and LeSen Robotics, all are focusing on the humanoid robot field. Many industrial capitalists are also betting on it, hoping to produce a “unicorn”.When Will Commercialization Land?Speaking of humanoid robots, Boston Dynamics is undoubtedly a model in this field. Boston Dynamics first gained worldwide fame for developing Big Dog and has released several robots including BigDog, Rise, LittleDog, PETMAN, LS3, Spot, Handle, and Atlas, ranging from single-legged and multi-legged robots to humanoid robots. Among them, the Atlas robot can parkour, do backflips, dance, and use tools, setting a benchmark for future commercial service humanoid robots with its outstanding motion performance.However, the Atlas robot achieves excellent motion performance through complex AI algorithms, multimodal visual perception, and high-performance electro-hydraulic drive systems, but the high cost of over a million dollars limits the commercialization process.In contrast, Tesla aims to achieve product standardization, low cost, and mass production of humanoid robots by replacing hydraulic drives with electric drives. It is reported that Tesla’s humanoid robot uses electric drives as the power system, optimizing the number of joints to reduce power consumption during sitting and fast walking, and transferring autonomous driving technologies such as FSD, Dojo chips, and pure vision systems to humanoid robots, prioritizing research on motion control algorithms. This also makes it possible for electric drives to replace hydraulic drives, achieving high motion control performance and low-cost advantages that open up the consumer market.Currently, Tesla’s Optimus is priced at $20,000, and through a supporting supply chain, leveraging scale effects and algorithm synergy, it is expected to accelerate the cost reduction of humanoid robots. In July of this year, Musk responded during Tesla’s Q2 2023 earnings call that Tesla has only produced 5-6 Optimus robots so far, and while the number is small, it will increase every month in the future.In the future, more participants will enter the humanoid robot sector, and competition will become more intense, but it will undoubtedly further promote the cost reduction of humanoid robots.Zhi Hui Jun stated at the previous launch conference that the Expedition A1 will rapidly enter commercialization in 2024, “ZhiYuan Robotics will not only be the coolest robot but also the most practical robot, which will first be applied in the industrial manufacturing field and gradually move towards households, assisting workers, researchers, and family members in completing various tasks.”It is reported that ZhiYuan Robotics will also strive to keep the cost of the robot below 200,000 yuan. Therefore, after BYD’s investment in ZhiYuan Robotics, the Expedition A1 may first be commercially applied in BYD’s factories, as this is a win-win situation for both BYD and ZhiYuan Robotics: it enhances the level of factory intelligence and subsequently reduces labor costs; on the other hand, humanoid robots have a scenario for large-scale application.Regarding the future market prospects for humanoid robots, Musk optimistically estimates that with a 2:1 ratio of humans to robots, the demand for robots will far exceed that of cars, potentially reaching 10 billion units. According to Goldman Sachs’ forecast, in an optimistic scenario, the humanoid robot market could reach $154 billion by 2035.In the future, we can imagine a scene where, in an intelligent factory, humanoid robots are moving around the workshop, seamlessly transitioning to the next task after receiving new voice commands; in shopping malls, humanoid robots can guide and explain, directly facilitating orders, and after shopping, humanoid robots can carry the purchased items; at home, humanoid robots can cook meals and engage in conversation… In short, the scenes that previously only appeared in science fiction movies will soon become a reality before our eyes.
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