The humanoid robot industry has entered a critical turning point in development: "Artificial Intelligence" has become

In March, the "first stock of humanoid robots" Ubiquitous surged, and as of March 30th, its stock price had risen by 131.53%, allowing the industry to see the trend of this segmented industry again.

In fact, since last year, there has been a significant increase in events related to humanoid robots, such as the launch of Ubiquitous and the launch of the Fourier GR-1 as the "first shot in mass production"... About 20 domestic manufacturers have released related products; The policy has also entered an explosive period, and the "Guiding Opinions on the Innovation and Development of Humanoid Robots" have been officially released. At least 11 provinces and cities in China have included humanoid robots as a key "future industry" to focus on.

With the entry of multiple parties, the development challenges of the humanoid robot industry have gradually become prominent: on the one hand, there is huge R&D investment, and on the other hand, there is a slow commercialization process, with high costs, low sales, and negative profits interlocking. In this situation, how far is the landing of humanoid robots' "boots"?

Cross border players charge into the hot track

Legitimate humanoid robot players have generally evolved along the path of "cylindrical wheeled multi legged humanoid bipedal", or to some extent, laid out in parallel.

The first generation product of Yushu Technology was also a quadruped robot; Zhumi Technology started with various types of floor cleaning robots, including the robot dog Eame One and the humanoid robot, which were born in 2021 and 2023 respectively; Before the birth of the first generation humanoid robot Walker, Ubiquitous also expanded into commercial wheeled robots; The product line planned by Dati Robot also includes four generations of service robot products: humanoid wheeled, dual arm wheeled, dual arm quadruped, and humanoid bipedal (family caregiver)

Because challenges related to stability, gait planning and coordination, human-computer interaction, energy and power systems also arise during the process of machine standing upright.

Among them, the "brain" is often seen as the "seven inches" of the ecological chain. Yu Zhuliang, Executive Director of the Super Robot Research Institute, believes that currently, humanoid robots are inseparable from the artificial intelligence industry; It not only stands downstream of artificial intelligence, but also becomes one of the best carriers of artificial intelligence.

Therefore, from Open AI to Google, star companies in the field of big models have more or less ventured into humanoid machines; On the other hand, humanoid robot companies are often among the most enthusiastic about large models.

In July 2023, Datu Robotics released the industry's first multimodal large model RobotGPT based on the Hai Rui AGI platform; Ubiquitous also creates a embodied AI model called "Mozi". Its founder and chairman, Zhou Jian, revealed that the company's developing home care robot, after being implanted in the model, can better understand human emotions and output expressions that match the scene. "Humanoid robots will definitely be one of the biggest beneficiaries of the AI era

The expansion of the humanoid robot race track is clearly continuing. The number of crossover players among the newly squeezed players.

In the automotive industry, Tesla's "Optimus Prime" based on its technological advantages in autonomous driving has made significant progress, with one of its goals being to replace repetitive and intensive human labor; Home appliance giant Dyson has expanded its workforce by a thousand and invested £ 5 billion to enter the race, planning to launch consumer grade robots that can do household chores; In addition, Huawei and Xiaomi have also released achievements successively... Cross border players with their own advantages are expected to bring greater competition to the industry.

This in turn leads to an explosion of technology and patents. According to the research institute of People's Daily Online, China has become the country with the highest number of valid patents for humanoid robots, with a cumulative application volume of 6618, an increase of 25 times in 8 years; Among them, Ubiquitous also ranks first in the world with 763 valid technology patents for humanoid robots.

The Guiding Opinions on the Innovation and Development of Humanoid Robots issued by the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology propose that as a new highland of technological competition, humanoid robots are expected to become disruptive products after computers, smartphones, and new energy vehicles. The successive swarms of people seem to be a realistic portrayal of this sentence, and also indirectly confirm the wide degree of industrial interdependence.

The rising popularity means that the R&D ecosystem is improving, but we should also be wary of the waste of resources caused by rushing forward and redundant construction. "Yu Zhuliang suggested that policies should provide more orderly guidance to tilt resources towards the missing links.

At present, from Shanghai to strive for the landing of the national innovation center for humanoid robots, to Beijing to issue the proposal of the "National Humanoid Robot Ecological Consortium", to Shenzhen to prepare for the establishment of the Guangdong Humanoid Robot Innovation Center... The standardization and coordination with the alliance as the carrier has begun, and the industry may move from the blindfolded era to an organized development.

A new round of competition will focus on costs

In fact, the dream of human beings becoming "machine adults" has a long history, but it has also encountered many obstacles.

The first humanoid robot in human history was born in Japan 51 years ago. Developed by Waseda University, WABOT-1 is equipped with visual and auditory devices that can mimic simple human behavior.

Afterwards, Honda, Toyota, Sony, and others stepped down one after another. Among them, Honda's ASIMO is capable of walking, running, jumping, dancing, as well as simple communication and gesture recognition. However, in 2018, Honda suddenly announced the cessation of ASIMO development and disbanded the relevant team, causing a temporary lull in the humanoid machine craze.

In fact, the "shattered dream" of ASIMO reflects the deep-seated contradictions in the industry - based on disproportionate high research and development and low sales, profitability and survival are still urgent practical issues for most humanoid robot companies.

Taking Ubiquitous as an example, in the past four years, its R&D investment has reached 429 million yuan, 517 million yuan, 428 million yuan, and 491 million yuan, accounting for over 40% of its total revenue for a long time; In addition, the single machine price of key components such as sensors and frameless motors can reach tens of thousands of yuan, and a humanoid machine is often composed of hundreds or thousands of large and small parts. The increase in the price of raw materials or accessories also exacerbates the upward trend of enterprise costs and narrows profits.

The huge cost has further led to high prices for humanoid robots, hindering their sales and promotion. The average selling price of the Walker series is still as high as 5.988 million yuan, with only 10 units sold in the past three years. Zhou Jian frankly stated that the industry chain of humanoid robots is very long, and high manufacturing costs will be a significant obstacle until mass production is achieved.

Under the dual constraints, Uber has fallen into the quagmire of "increasing income without increasing profits". Over the past four years, it has accumulated losses of more than 3.8 billion yuan, and the amount of losses has been increasing year by year. In 2023 alone, the amount of losses increased by 28.17% year-on-year. In the context of the imbalance between technological upgrading and financial stability, going public has become a necessary choice for its "blood supplement".

Based on this, a new round of competition will focus on cost.

At present, efforts are being made by enterprises to independently develop substitutes, replace suppliers, and optimize structural components, and the trend of lower prices is gradually emerging. Ubiquitous is the world's first company to reduce the cost of bipedal human sized humanoid machines to below $1 million; Musk also recently claimed that Tesla has achieved significant results in reducing the cost of humanoid robots, and its final cost will be less than half of that of a car; According to the plan of Huawei's genius youth "Zhihui Jun", the cost of the expedition A1 humanoid robot will be further controlled within 200000 yuan.

But in the short term, it is not realistic to rely on humanoid robots to make a living. For the vast majority of enterprises, humanoid robots are still only used as a symbol of technological reserves or a means to attract capital, "said Yu Zhuliang." The relevant sectors are still in the stage of burning money, and relying on other businesses to make money to 'support' humanoid robots is still mainstream

According to the 2022 annual report of Ubiquitous, its education and logistics robots and solutions, consumer grade robots and hardware equipment constitute the backbone business, accounting for over 90% of the total, with the education sector contributing half of the market share; Wang Enxi, Vice President of Dati Robotics and General Manager of Guangzhou Company, also revealed that humanoid robots are still in the early stages of industrialization, and the company's "cloud network" architecture provides multi-dimensional sources of operating income.

Standing at the crossroads of commercial use

On March 6th, the stock price of Uber surged by 88.13%, achieving the largest daily increase since its listing, and the strong momentum continued for several days afterwards.

The upward trend occurred just after the release of the "training" video of Walker S at NIO car factory. In the video, the industrial version of the humanoid robot has participated in door lock quality inspection, headlight cover inspection, seat belt inspection, and car label pasting work. Capital has once again seen the dawn of commercial landing of humanoid robots.

Since last year, the call for the "first year of commercial use of humanoid robots" has been raised, but in the eyes of many industry insiders, humanoid robots still have a long way to go before they can truly land.

Firstly, technology and cost remain the first barriers that need to be overcome for the large-scale commercialization of humanoid machines.

From another dimension, the issue of cost is a matter of technological maturity and value creativity, "said Wang Enxi. Therefore, for enterprises, there are two things that need to be promoted simultaneously: on the one hand, continuing to optimize technology to effectively improve the efficiency of humanoid robots; On the other hand, cost control can be achieved through supply chain management and mass production.

From being able to walk to being able to work, the multi algorithm collaboration ability of humanoid robots still needs to be improved. In other words, it is necessary to form an effective closed loop for the robot's perception, cognition, decision-making, and execution; In addition, improvements are needed in battery life, heat dissipation, and resistance to pressure when weighing with both hands, which in turn requires breakthroughs in the supporting industries from electronic information to new materials.

He further emphasized that whether it is product iteration or mass production, it must be oriented towards application scenarios. "In fact, the main technical issues of humanoid robots have transitioned from 'whether they exist' to 'whether they are superior or not.' The next task is to find a compromise between technology and implementation, and transform massive research and development into products

Zhou Jian also told reporters from Southern Finance and Economics that on the road to reality for humanoid robots, simple hardware or software is no longer the primary obstacle. The most urgent thing now is to find entry scenarios, achieve large-scale applications, and obtain massive data feedback to drive product iteration and cost reduction.

In this process, the government may play a leading role. Yu Zhuliang believes that given that humanoid robots are still in a high investment and high-risk stage, it is necessary to use policy measures to compensate for market behavior that seeks benefits and avoids harm; The government can try to take some infrastructure scenarios as a starting point for application, and then form demonstration and promotion.

The Guiding Opinions on the Innovation and Development of Humanoid Robots have defined three major application scenarios for humanoid robots - special, manufacturing, and livelihood fields. Among them, labor-intensive manufacturing scenarios such as 3C and automobiles are particularly attractive. Whether it's Figure, Boston Dynamics, or Uber, the preferred scenario for robot "training" is always the automobile factory.

In addition, the industry generally believes that commercial services such as nursing and housekeeping will be the closest markets to humanoid robots.

Taking Dadai as an example, its humanoid robots are currently mainly focused on commercial guidance, reception, and related educational training scenarios; It is reported that the company plans to consider using a leasing model to hedge price barriers and further open up the market. Starting from the business model and breaking through commercial difficulties may be a beneficial and feasible start.

The commercial road of humanoid robots is destined to be long, but in any case, 2024 will be a key turning point in the development of humanoid robots: players from different chains are rushing in one after another, the track is gradually starting to break away from the state of only giants, policy attention, technological upgrades, and industrial chain verification continue to progress, the ecology is further maturing, and the era of blind running may end, turning towards more orderly and organized actions.