Step into the exhibition hall where Suzhou is pursuing technology. It is displayed with signature products such as vacuum cleaners and scanning machines. In the middle, it is a robot similar to ordinary men's body shapes, and a robot dog that shakes his head and interacts with visitors.

This unicorn company, known for its sweeping robot, launched the second -generation bionic machine dog and general humanoid robot in March this year.Yu Hao, the founder and CEO of the pursuit, told Lianhe Morning Post that the company plans to mass produce 1,000 robots during the year and put them on offline stores as welcome members.

With the rapid development of artificial intelligence (AI) and sports control system technology, humanoid robots are becoming the latest hot track in the field of technology.American electric vehicle giant Tesla announced at the end of July that it will be put into a factory for practical testing with the independent brand robot next year.And many Chinese companies, including the pursuit, are ready to run before that.

Fourier Smart, located in Shanghai, just released a general humanoid robot GR-1 in early July, and plans to mass-produced in mass production at the end of this year.Xu Dehong, co-founder of the company, pointed out in an interview that most laboratory robots are still walking with their feet, and GR-1 with 40 joints can be fully stood upright.

Xu Dehong said: "After watching the robot video released by Tesla, I found that our robot has gone better, so I decided to release it first to attract more resources and talents."

Coincidentally, Yu Hao also watched the Tesla robot video. He studied the progress of the pursuit of robots on the progress of a driver such as joint motors and the richer application scenarios."Soaking coffee, finishing clothes, bedding, etc. are all the application scenarios we are expanding."

As early as the 1970s, Waseda University in Japan developed the first humanoid robot, but they were only applied to specific fields for many years.With the maturity of AI technology, in recent years, Google, Amazon and other technology giants have successively entered the market. Tesla has become the header of the humanoid robot market in just two years with its strong software strength and supply chain capabilities.

The popularization of large language models such as ChatGPT this year has greatly reduced the cost of application of AI, allowing humanoid robots to be applied to more fields.Huang Renxun, the founder and CEO of Nvidia, bluntly stated in May that the next wave of AI will be intelligent.Management consulting company McKinsey predicts that by 2030, the work of up to 800 million people around the world may be replaced by automated robots.

Faced with the huge potential market, Chinese technology giants such as Baidu and Xiaomi have entered a humanoid robot in recent years. Tencent's investment in Youbi will go public in Hong Kong this year, sprinting the "first share of humanoid robots".The prospectus shows that as of the end of September 2022, the total of about 500,000 robots had been sold.

Xie Ming, an associate professor of the School of Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering of Nanyang University of Science and Technology in Singapore, studied and judged in the interview. The level of Chinese humanoid robots has rapidly improved in recent years and is currently second only to the United States and Japan worldwide.Without intervention, Chinese robots can jump in the world after two or three years.

However, Chinese robots still have a significant gap with international head manufacturers in core component technology.For example, Xie Ming is currently dominated by advanced sensors and controllers, while chips are mainly from the United States and Europe.If the United States coalition allies will increase the export restrictions on China, China will take a while to rebuild the supply chain, which will greatly slow down the development of the robot industry.

Sun Lining, Dean of the School of Mechanical and Electrical Engineering of Suzhou University in April this year, also pointed out that the key basic technology is the bottleneck problem that restricts the development of the Chinese robot industry.It is urgent to overcome, the toughness of the industrial chain needs to be enhanced, and the innovation chain and the collaborative innovation system must be further improved.

Xu Dehong introduced that Fourier's motors, sensors, and control systems have been independently developed by the inside. This is due to the foundation of the company's research and development of rehabilitation robots for many years, as well as the "big" and "fast" of the Chinese market.

China has occupied half of the global industrial robot market for many years, and service robots used for catering and accommodation are also developing rapidly.According to the statistics of the Chinese Electronics Society, the Chinese robot market size exceeded 100 billion yuan (S $ 18.6 billion) mark last year, of which about 5 were into industrial robots. The proportion of service robots and special robots accounted for 37%and 13%, respectively.

Before starting a business in China in 2017, Xu Dehong worked as a researcher in Singapore universities and worked in many multinational companies.He bluntly said: "To do research and development in Singapore, each step must be 100 points to advance forward. You can release 80 points in the Chinese market, and then gradually improve it, which allows many technologies to land quickly in China."

Zhu Feida, an associate professor of the School of Computing and Information Systems of Singapore Management University, analyzed in an analysis that China provides a larger market for humanoid robots, allowing humanoid robots to be applied to more different scenarios such as services and medical care.Accelerated development of the industry.

Zhu Feida also pointed out that with the iteration of technology, the core competitiveness of humanoid robots has transformed from sports capabilities to AI, and the leading advantages of the United States in this field are obvious."Humanoid robots are the ultimate form of artificial intelligence. Whose 'brain' is more developed and can run farther on this track."

Xie Ming also believes that China has a huge advantage in product innovation, but theoretical innovation and technological innovation are still shortcomings.He expects the hardware gap between China and the United States and Japan to decrease over time, but the software will still be behind."If China increases investment in software development and software talent education as soon as possible, the gap with advanced countries is expected to shrink in 10 years."

Compared with smartphones, humanoid robots have a low demand for advanced process chips with small sizes. As a result, Chinese operators are not affected by American chip export control.However, the Wall Street Journal reports that the US Department of Commerce is considering new restrictions on implementing AI chips exported to China to further weaken China's AI development.

Xu Dehong admits that the intensification of Sino -US scientific and technological warfare is an unwilling to see, but it cannot stop the trend.To this end, Fourier established an overseas business department in 2018. "What we can do is to bring technology to the world through cooperation, so that more universities and institutions should use our robots in different scenarios to help us accelerate the development of technology."

Yu Hao believes that under the premise that no party has mature technology, the blockade of the United States is not the most important challenge to pursue facing."When we face the unknown world today, everyone may fail here. Everyone is exploring simultaneously, testing the limits of our intelligence and the exploration of application scenarios."