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Author: Chang Minxiao, Qiu Xiaofen

Editor: Su Jianxun

36Kr learned that the general robot company "Zhuji Power" has completed a round of strategic financing, led by Alibaba, China Merchants Venture Capital, and SAIC Group's Shangqi Capital, and followed by original shareholders Frees Capital, Oasis Capital, and Mingshi Capital. It is worth noting that this is also the first humanoid robot company invested by Alibaba.

Zhuji Power was founded in 2022. Its main products include full-size humanoid robots, four-wheeled robots, bipedal robots, etc., which are applied in the fields of intelligent manufacturing, industrial inspection, logistics distribution, home services, etc. The funds raised in this round of financing will be mainly used for technology iteration to meet the commercial application of humanoid robots.

It is understood that "Zhuji Power" is one of the first companies to combine spatial intelligence and motion intelligence in humanoid robots.

In December 2023, Zhuji Power first demonstrated its self-developed humanoid robot "CL-1"; in April 2024, Zhuji Power demonstrated the latest application progress of "CL-1", which can complete movements such as climbing stairs one step at a time, starting and accelerating, turning and going back and forth based on real-time terrain perception. After completing the verification of all-terrain mobility, Zhuji Power will focus on general mobile operation capabilities and gradually integrate multi-modal large model technology into humanoid robots.

Zhuji Power Product Display

In the past, the biggest challenge for humanoid robots was the high deployment cost, limited generalization ability, and they could only work in specific scenarios. Therefore, the core capability of humanoid robots is to break through the barrier of reliable versatility. This means that humanoid robots have the foundation to enter real life and can build the ability to adapt to new environments, just like humans constantly adapt to new life scenarios based on past life experience.

In order to overcome the difficulties, "Zhuji Power" will gradually introduce multimodal large model technology (embodiment, force perception, touch, joint information and other modalities) into humanoid robots on the one hand, and promote the realization of universality in hardware on the other hand.

However, although the industry has not yet reached a technical consensus on how to improve the generalization ability of humanoid robots, various new methods are constantly emerging, such as imitation learning and video-based learning.

It is understood that Zhuji Power has chosen to use a large amount of human motion data to pre-train humanoid robots to help them better complete tasks and adapt to human society. There are three steps in total:

1. Data screening: Select various images of human movements from existing video data;

2. Pre-training: After collecting data, the basic motion capabilities of the general robot are graded from easy to difficult, and pre-trained step by step. This process makes the training results more controllable and obtains high-performance strategies;

3. Reinforcement learning: Using the Real2Sim2Real closed loop, real data is continuously learned and trained in the simulation environment, and then enters the real world to verify the learning results of AI. In the process of continuous rotation of simulation and reality learning, the gap between AI applications in the two environments is gradually narrowed, allowing the robot's AI "brain" to truly understand the real world.

As for the founding team, Zhang Wei, the founder of Zhuji Power, is a tenured professor at the Southern University of Science and Technology. He was previously a tenured professor at the Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering (ECE) at Ohio State University.

At present, the competition in the field of humanoid robots among major domestic and foreign companies has become fierce. Tencent invested in UBTECH Robotics, the "first humanoid robot stock" that was successfully listed on the Hong Kong stock market last year; Baidu has made two consecutive bets on Zhiyuan Robotics, the "Huawei genius boy" Zhihuijun, this year; Meituan chose Galaxy General, and also led the B2 round of financing of Yushu at the beginning of this year.

Overseas, major technology giants have also flocked to the humanoid robot market, from Tesla's iconic product Optimus Prime to Figure AI, which is favored by Nvidia, Microsoft, OpenAI and Amazon founder Bezos.

However, according to 36Kr’s observation, the current layout of domestic and foreign Internet giants in the field of embodied intelligent robots is mainly divided into two camps: investment camp and independent research and development camp. Compared with the direct investment of the big companies with deep pockets, ByteDance, Xiaomi, Nvidia, Tesla, etc. choose independent research and development.

Domestic major manufacturers' layout in the field of humanoid robots, drawing: Intelligent emergence

Foreign major companies' layout in the field of humanoid robots, drawing: Intelligent emergence

According to a report released by Gaogong Industry Research Institute (GGII) in May 2023, the global market size of humanoid robots is expected to exceed US$20 billion in 2030.

Zhang Wei, founder of Zhuji Power, once said that humanoid robots are essentially "AI with hardware carriers". AI determines the generalization of robots, and manufacturing determines the reliability of products, thereby realizing its core capability - stable and reliable versatility. It can be seen that humanoid robots are one of the few intersections between the AI ​​world and the physical world, and the layout of humanoid robots by major manufacturers is also the next trend of artificial intelligence after the layout of large models.

Investor evaluation:

China Merchants Venture Capital: "AI is one of the important directions of China Merchants Group's 'third entrepreneurial' strategic emerging industry layout. Universal robots, as an important physical carrier of AI technology, will enter thousands of industries in the future. As a comprehensive central enterprise, China Merchants Group has a wealth of application scenarios in the fields of transportation and logistics, comprehensive finance, and comprehensive development of cities and parks. The investment in Zhuji Power is an important step in our layout of industrial artificial intelligence innovation. We are optimistic about the technical accumulation and innovation capabilities of the Zhuji Power team and look forward to the implementation of universal robots in our group's industries in the future."

Shangqi Capital Investment Team: "With the explosion of large-scale model technology and the continuous reduction of hardware costs, we believe that general humanoid robots are the best next-generation intelligent terminal hardware equipped with AI. Dr. Zhang Wei has been deeply engaged in the research of humanoid robots for many years and has led the Zhuji Power team to continuously promote the establishment of the embodied intelligence Foundation Model and realize the real data closed loop of Real2Sim2Real. As the lead investor and industry partner of this round, we look forward to working with Zhuji Power to accelerate the application of general humanoid robots in fields such as intelligent manufacturing."

36Kr graphics

36Kr graphics

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