Tesla humanoid robot Optimus Prime (Source: Tesla website)
One stone creates a thousand waves. Since the second half of this year, Chinese car companies have accelerated "entering" the humanoid robot track, BYD invested in the humanoid robot startup company - Zhiyuan robot, Xiaopeng released self-developed humanoid robot PX5, Xiaomi launched the humanoid bionic robot CyberOne, aiming at the home service scene.
In the face of the trillion-level blue ocean market of humanoid robots, car companies have the advantages of software technology, hardware and manufacturing capabilities to accelerate the development and manufacturing process of their humanoid robots; It also needs to face the triple challenges of core parts research and development, cost control and exploration of commercial scenarios.
Car companies create "people" busy
"2023 can be regarded as the first year of Chinese humanoid robots, humanoid robots as the 'high-level' product form of robots, and its market prospects will exceed all robot categories in the past." Lu Hanchen, director of Gaogong Robot Industry Research Institute, said in an interview with China Electronics News that there are more than 30 domestic players, and the current progress of each product is beyond expectations.
The first to hit the track at full speed were car manufacturers. Since the second half of this year, Chinese car companies have begun to lay out a humanoid robot track.
In August, BYD invested in Shanghai Zhiyuan New Technology Co, a humanoid robot company owned by Zhiyuan Robotics, and became the company's seventh largest shareholder. Although the subscription amount is only 1,914,997 yuan, this is the first robot company BYD has publicly invested in.
Zhiyuan robot was established by "Huawei genius boy" Peng Zhihui, the company launched the first humanoid robot expedition A1 half a year after its establishment - 175cm tall, 53kg weight, 49 degrees of freedom, the maximum pace of 7km/h, the whole machine bearing 80kg, single arm maximum load of 5kg.
Xiaopeng releases humanoid robot PX5 (Source: Xiaopeng official website)
In October this year, Xiaopeng, a new energy vehicle company, announced the self-developed biped humanoid robot PX5. This intelligent robot has bipedal walking and obstacle crossing capabilities, and with high-performance joints, it can walk indoors and outdoors with strides, agile movement, and immunity to obstacles. He Xiaopeng, chairman of Xopeng Motors, even plans humanoid robots into his future life: "When I am old, robots can beat whipped eggs with me and change diapers for me."
Xiaomi humanoid robot CyberOne (Source: Lei Jun Weibo)
In August Xiaomi, a would-be car maker, unveiled a full-size humanoid robot called CyberOne (known by its stage name "Tie Da"). According to officials, Tie Da is 177cm tall and weighs 52kg, positioning a home service robot. This month, Xiaomi Group's subsidiary Beijing Xiaomi Robot Technology Co LTD also took a stake in Beijing Humanoid Robot Innovation Center Co LTD, the country's first provincial humanoid robot innovation center.
Why car companies cross over humanoid robots?
From Ashimo (a humanoid robot launched by Japan's Honda), which debuted in 2000, to Boston Dynamics' Atlas (80% owned by South Korea's Hyundai Motor), to Optimus (Optimus) in 2022, there are car companies behind the world's most advanced humanoid robots. Why do automobile companies have cross-border layout of "humanoid robots"?
Boston Dynamics Humanoid robot Atlas (Credit: Boston Dynamics website)
Industry experts said that, first, although the current appearance and role of intelligent cars and humanoid robots are very different, but the two products are robot attributes, and the same destination. Second, the broad application field and high commercial value attract related enterprises.
"Anything powered by a computer is actually a robot, you can think of a Tesla car as a robot on wheels, and anything connected to the Internet is actually an endpoint actuator of artificial intelligence." Musk recently expressed his views at the AI Safety Summit. He even defined Tesla as the world's largest robot/semi-intelligent robot - a robot on wheels. "We can take the same technology and put it into a humanoid robot and make it more useful." "Musk said.
Li Boyang, vice president of the China Robot Association, co-founder and CEO of EX robot, said in an interview with a reporter from China Electronics News that the car is a hardware carrier to accompany human travel, but in the home, work, consumption and other scenarios, humanoid robots are better hardware carriers. Automotive companies also want their products to cover more scenarios, so they choose to lay out humanoid robots. "Humanoid robots not only look like humans, but also can complete many tasks that humans can complete. They are general-purpose robots with a wide range of applications." Li Boyang pointed out.
Lu Hanchen said that new energy automobile companies and humanoid robot products are interconnected at some technical levels, and the two have the feasibility of technical migration from the hardware to the software level, so the ability and quality necessary for humanoid robots are not unattainable for new energy automobile companies.
Gao Gao, senior analyst of CCID Consulting intelligent equipment Industry Research Center, said in an interview with China Electronics News that the development of humanoid robots by car companies can fully use existing resources to reduce manufacturing costs and shorten the development process. For example, at the hardware level, computing chips, control panels, vision sensors, high-performance batteries and energy management systems used in new energy vehicles can be transplanted to humanoid robot products, and lightweight design and production experience of auto parts can also help humanoid robot production. At the software level, humanoid robots can "stand on the shoulders of giants" and perform customized optimization based on the relatively mature algorithms of environmental perception, target recognition, path planning, and safety protection of new energy vehicles.
In fact, that's exactly what car companies are doing. In terms of software, Tesla revealed that it has applied some of the car's technology to the humanoid robot Optimus Prime, such as cooling system, fully automatic driving system FSD, with the help of fully automatic driving system FSD, Optimus Prime has visual perception ability - can be based on the camera input data, using neural networks for calculation. In terms of hardware, BYD, as the world's major rechargeable battery manufacturer, is already the main supplier of robot professional intelligent manufacturing brands such as Cobos.
According to the International Robotics Association forecast, from 2021 to 2030, the global humanoid robot market size compound annual growth rate will be as high as 71%. Data from the Chinese Society of Electronics show that by 2030, China's humanoid robot market is expected to reach about 870 billion yuan.
Zheshang Securities expects that the demand for humanoid robots will be about 1.77 million units in 2030, and the global market space is expected to reach 169.2 billion yuan, with a CAGR of 25% from 2023 to 2030. Musk even predicted that the demand for humanoid robots will reach 10 billion to 20 billion units in the future.
Industrial life cycle diagram of humanoid robots, new energy vehicles and smartphones
Gao pointed out that the number of humanoid robots in the future will far exceed the number of new energy vehicles and create a trillion-level market, and auto companies as "technology giants" will naturally try to win this big cake.
There are three obstacles to large-scale application
Industry experts told reporters that the current layout of humanoid robots by automobile companies has its own technical and production advantages. However, humanoid robots are still in the early stages of development, and car companies still face many problems in the layout of humanoid robots - parts self-research, cost control and commercial scene landing have become the three major difficulties.
Due to the different sizes of humanoid robots, many key components need to be developed and manufactured by manufacturers. When building Optimus Prime, the Tesla team could not find the right actuators and sensors, and had to develop their own customization. The Zhiyuan robot team also revealed that the core joint motor and hand of its humanoid robot "Expedition A1", as well as the middleware system and thinking system were all developed by the team. Xiaopeng's robot PX5 also uses its self-developed high-performance joints, human-like dexterous hands and ultra-lightweight humanoid robotic arms.
Robots are not standard electronic goods, for example, the height of humanoid robots that have been published ranges from 1.5 meters to 1.8 meters, and many core components cannot be adapted, universal and mass produced. Li Tong, founder and CEO of Qinglang Intelligence, a service robot manufacturer, admitted that the most difficult part of building a robot is that it is impossible to buy ready-made parts, and many core components need to be customized by the team according to the actual size of their robot products.
The high cost has also been one of the important reasons why humanoid robots are difficult to commercialize. Boston Dynamics' Atlas robot is expected to cost more than a million dollars to manufacture, Tesla plans to start the humanoid robot at $20,000, and Zhiyuan robot plans to control the cost at about 200,000 yuan.
Li Boyang said that in addition to hardware manufacturing costs, humanoid robots will also incur some costs during use, such as a large number of software applications, data cloud services, the use of large models and the cost of hardware operation and maintenance. This also leads to the first application of humanoid robots at the B end at this stage.
Compared with the problem of cost control, enterprises have more fantasies for the landing of business scenarios. At the time of its acquisition of Boston Dynamics, Hyundai said it planned to gradually expand its presence in the humanoid robot market to develop humanoid robots for complex services, such as those in hospitals that care for patients. He Xiaopeng said he hopes that a year after the release of the PX5, Xiaopeng's self-developed bipedal robot PX5 can be used in factories and stores, such as patrolling factories or introducing products in Xiaopeng stores.
Industry experts point out that humanoid robots that can dance and backflip will not have direct value to humans, and companies are looking to improve business operations and reduce costs, and people are hoping that it can solve complex and practical problems in life.
Mr Lu said Boston Dynamics had not completed the commercialisation loop and was not a "role model" worthy of full reference.
Zhiyuan robot assembly car chassis (Source: Zhiyuan Robot official website)
Compared with foreign top humanoid robots that can complete difficult actions such as dancing and running our cool, Peng Zhihui, founder and CTO of Zhiyuan Robots, said that the Zhiyuan team hopes that the Expedition A1 will control the cost within 200,000 yuan before realizing these capabilities, and have the possibility of real landing.