◎Our reporter Lu Chengkuan
Recently, a video of "humanoid robots entering a factory to 'work'" sparked heated discussions among netizens.
In the video, the humanoid robot successfully completed the quality inspection of car door locks, seat belt inspection, and car light cover quality inspection, and also put on the car logo extremely smoothly with supple movements.
Throughout the process, the humanoid robot demonstrated exquisite body control capabilities.
This is just one example of humanoid robots moving towards practical applications.
In recent years, humanoid robot technology has accelerated its evolution and has become a new highland for technological competition and a new engine for economic development.
Humanoid robots with smart minds and flexible limbs are becoming a new track for future industries.
Public data shows that the humanoid robot market is expected to reach US$154 billion by 2035.
Why should we vigorously develop the humanoid robot industry? What are the differences between humanoid robots and other robots? What problems still need to be solved to achieve high-quality development of the humanoid robot industry?
With these questions, reporters from Science and Technology Daily interviewed relevant experts.
Reshaping the global industrial development pattern
As an important carrier of emerging technologies and key equipment of modern industries, intelligent robots are a strategic direction that leads the digital and intelligent development of industries and continuously breeds new industries, new models, and new business formats. They are an important tool and important tool for reshaping the competitive advantage of my country's manufacturing industry. means is a realistic choice to accelerate the transformation and upgrading of my country's industry.
"Humanoid robots are an important embodiment and key equipment of artificial intelligence in physical space, and are a typical representative of physical general artificial intelligence systems. It is a disruptive platform product after computers, smartphones, and new energy vehicles, and will become a leader in the digital development of the industry. , Intelligent upgrade of new productivity is expected to continue to give birth to new industries, new models, and new business formats." On February 28, Qiao Hong, a member of the National Committee of the Chinese People's Political Consultative Conference, an academician of the Chinese Academy of Sciences, and a researcher at the Institute of Automation of the Chinese Academy of Sciences, said in an interview with reporters.
As an intelligent robot that imitates human appearance, form and behavioral capabilities, humanoid robots can seamlessly use all human infrastructure and tools, integrate into human society, and achieve natural language interaction and behavioral actions through AI empowerment.
Their form, communication, and work ability are all like workers.
Therefore, it has broad application prospects in different fields and scenarios such as aerospace, intelligent manufacturing, agricultural production, and home services, and is expected to subvert the existing development pattern in some fields.
"This is a significant feature that distinguishes humanoid robots from other specialized industrial robots." said Zhong Shanlin, a Ph.D. from the Institute of Automation, Chinese Academy of Sciences.
Compared with ordinary industrial robots and service robots, humanoid robots are very different in terms of structural design, hardware composition, control algorithms, core performance requirements and component selection.
"For example, the number of joints of ordinary industrial robots is generally about 6, while the number of joints of humanoid robots is more than 40. Generally, each joint of humanoid robots requires a servo motor, and some joints related to walking balance have high explosive force on the motors. Moment response and stable torque output put forward extremely high requirements." Zhong Shanlin gave an example.
At the end of 2023, in order to promote the high-quality development of the humanoid robot industry, cultivate new productivity, and empower new industrialization at a high level, the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology issued the "Guiding Opinions on the Innovative Development of Humanoid Robots" (hereinafter referred to as the "Guiding Opinions").
The "Guiding Opinions" propose that by 2025, a humanoid robot innovation system will be initially established.
Breakthroughs have been made in a number of key technologies such as "brain", "cerebellum" and "limbs", ensuring the safe and effective supply of core components. The complete product has reached the internationally advanced level and achieved mass production; it has been demonstrated and applied in scenarios such as people's livelihood services.
By 2027, the technological innovation capabilities of humanoid robots will be significantly improved, a safe and reliable industrial chain and supply chain system will be formed, an internationally competitive industrial ecosystem will be built, and the comprehensive strength will reach the world's advanced level.
Industry experts believe that high technology, high efficiency and high quality are important features of new productivity, and its core symbol is a substantial increase in total factor productivity.
Through independent innovation, we will break through the basic theory and key technologies of the real general artificial intelligence system, deeply integrate artificial intelligence and humanoid robots, and open up the 'brain-cerebellum-limb' loop, which will promote the optimization and upgrading of various industries in the real economy and solve the application of new productivity. The complex problems faced by many industries, scenarios, and tasks are of positive significance.
Many technical problems need to be overcome
At present, the trend of intelligentization in the humanoid robot industry is obvious, the industrialization process is accelerating, the application fields are becoming wider and wider, and more industry standards and open platforms are gradually being established.
While seeing the achievements, we must also clearly realize that the development of my country's humanoid robot industry still faces multiple challenges.
"Humanoid robots need to meet the three requirements of high performance, low cost and mass production from research and development to widespread application." Liu Yu, a researcher at the Institute of Automation, Chinese Academy of Sciences, said that on the one hand, high performance and low cost are two factors that restrict each other.
How to enable a complex humanoid robot system with more than 40 degrees of freedom and an average volume comparable to a human to accurately complete various tasks while controlling the cost of the entire machine within 250,000 yuan is an important challenge.
On the other hand, batch size and stability restrict each other.
In such a complex system with many types and components, how to overcome the uncertainty caused by manufacturing errors of various parts and components so that the mass-produced system can work stably is also a key difficulty.
At present, core components such as reducers, servo motors, and controllers account for more than 70% of the total cost of the robot.
"We need to develop technologies such as lightweight bones, high-strength body structures, high-precision sensing, whole-body coordinated motion control, and dynamic arm grasping and dexterous operations to meet the high-dynamic, high-explosive, and high-precision performance requirements of humanoid robots to create The body structure of a humanoid robot with high safety, high reliability, and high environmental adaptability. This is a key bottleneck that our country currently needs to work hard to break through in terms of core components." Liu Yu said.
Like humans, humanoid robots also have a "brain" and a "cerebellum."
Liu Yu said: "Currently, we still need to overcome the 'cerebellum' key technology group that controls the movement of humanoid robots in response to the task requirements of humanoid robots such as complex terrain passage and full-body collaborative precision operations; at the same time, we need to enhance the humanoid robot's environmental perception, behavior control, and human intelligence." Machine-machine interaction capabilities; conquer the 'brain' key technology group that supports the full-scenario application of humanoid robots."
In terms of system integration, how to organically integrate software algorithms such as perception, cognition, decision-making, and control with hardware systems such as sensing, machinery, and materials to form an integrated system of software and hardware whose overall performance is higher than the performance of unit devices is also an important topic at home and abroad. Common challenges faced by researchers related to humanoid robots.
In Liu Yu's view, the human brain information processing method and the mechanism of human body motion structure are of great reference significance for building high-performance humanoid robot systems under the conditions of limited sensing accuracy and limited body accuracy, and can effectively make up for my country's problems in humanoid robot hardware systems. deficiencies.
Broad prospects for future industrial applications
Overall, my country has a good manufacturing foundation and a complete industrial chain. It is capable of providing technical support for the development of humanoid robots and a broad range of industrial application scenarios for humanoid robots.
Recently, with the support of the Chinese Academy of Sciences, the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology, and the Beijing Municipal Government, the humanoid robot research team of the Institute of Automation of the Chinese Academy of Sciences independently developed and achieved breakthroughs in high-explosive integrated joints, AI-enabled design, large robot models, and humanoid robots. Core technologies such as compliance control.
The team also successfully developed a "big factory" for humanoid robot hardware design and software development, through which it can quickly design and build humanoid robot hardware and software systems, significantly shortening the existing research and development cycle, and thus taking a step towards seizing the technological commanding heights of physical general artificial intelligence systems. A solid step.
Li Rui, the technical backbone of the humanoid robot research team of the Institute of Automation, Chinese Academy of Sciences, said: "Developing core components through the integration of software and hardware is the key to overcoming the neck-stuck technology of humanoid robots and creating a physical general artificial intelligence system."
At present, humanoid robot innovation centers have been established in Beijing and other places.
These innovation centers give full play to the advantages of scientific research institutions, enterprises, etc. and develop together, which will help cultivate my country's new productive force of humanoid robots, provide high-level support for new industrialization, and promote the high-quality development of the humanoid robot industry.
At the same time, with policy support, the application scenarios of humanoid robots in my country are also continuing to open up.
Humanoid robots have shown great potential in many fields such as industrial manufacturing, medical care, services, and rescue.
In the future, humanoid robots will surely become human beings' right-hand assistants and partners, bringing more convenience to mankind.
Qiao Hong believes that in the future, the humanoid robot industry ecosystem will first focus on key manufacturing areas such as 3C and automobiles. By improving the tool operation and task execution capabilities of humanoid robots, we will build humanoid robot demonstration production lines and factories, and achieve in-depth applications in typical smart manufacturing scenarios.
Secondly, the humanoid robot industry ecology will meet the needs of harsh conditions and dangerous scene operations. In special environments such as security guards, civil explosions, and rescue, the humanoid robot body will be strengthened by strengthening its safety protection capabilities, complex task intelligence generation, and high-precision operation capabilities. , greatly reducing the risk to workers.
Finally, by improving the reliability and safety of human-computer interaction of humanoid robots, we can also expand the application of humanoid robots in medical, housekeeping and other livelihood fields, and promote the application of humanoid robots in key industries such as agriculture and logistics.
With the rapid technological iteration, humanoid robots will become more low-cost and practical in the future.
In the next few years, humanoid robots that can sense and understand their environment and interact with humans in natural language will be around us.