2024-08-13
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Many years later, when faced with swarms of humanoid robots, humans will remember the distant night when the robots entered the factory to tighten screws.
On the evening of August 6th, Beijing time, OpenAI Figure, the embodied intelligence startup that led the investment, released its new generation of humanoid robot - Figure 02.
Under its sci-fi appearance:
Built-in visual language model (VLM), enabling semantic understanding and fast visual reasoning through the camera;
The 2.25 kWh custom battery in the trunk provides approximately 20+ hours of active operating time;
Integrated wiring allows for a more compact package;
Six built-in RGB cameras distributed on the head, front torso and back torso give it super vision;
Similar to the aircraft design, its exoskeleton structure enhances structural rigidity and the ability to withstand collisions;
The latest proportional human hand has 16 degrees of freedom and human-like strength;
The AI engine provides the latest AI models, with a 3x increase in onboard computing and AI inference capabilities.
Advances in various aspects have together made up this Figure 02 humanoid robot, which is known as "the most advanced AI hardware in the world."
Although Figure 02 may not be as perfect as claimed at the press conference, humanoid robots have indeed begun to appear intensively in recent times.
In addition to Figure 02, Tesla's Optimus, Yushu G1, Apollo, Digit, Sanctuary AI Phoenix, etc. have been put into use in many scenarios.
"AI Godmother" Fei-Fei Li raised $1 billion in three months to create World Labs, released intelligent robots such as VoxPoser, and is committed to developing large models that can understand the three-dimensional physical world.
Nvidia founder Jensen Huang also announced to us during his speech at COMPUTEX, standing with many robots:
The era of robots has arrived, and this is the next wave of AI.
This is partly because the progress of AI has provided a foundation for the development of general humanoid robots. Xu Huazhe, assistant professor at the Institute of Cross-Disciplinary Information Sciences at Tsinghua University, once explained it to us:
With the support of AI, so many different sensors will make a huge difference between the previous gripper and the current gripper. Because now it can not only grip the object, but also sense various signals before gripping the object. These signals will be processed by AI and finally make the most intelligent decision. You will find that such a smart gripper is not much worse than a human hand.
Compared with traditional robots that can only complete specific tasks in specific scenarios, the emergence of AI empowers robots, making it no longer out of reach for humanoid robots to have the abilities of perception, thinking, and decision-making.
In addition, years of accumulation have led to the maturity of related technologies and the reduction of costs. For example, the development of lidar, high-resolution cameras, motors, chips and batteries has laid the foundation for the development of humanoid robots. After all, these configurations are indispensable for the realization of intelligent humanoid robots.
2024 Embodied Intelligence Panorama, image from China Academy of Information and Communications Technology
According to the Gaogong Industry Research Institute (GGII), the global market size of humanoid robots will exceed US$20 billion in 2030, while investment bank Goldman Sachs predicts that the market size of humanoid robots will reach US$154 billion in 2035.
Not only is there a vast market, but many industry insiders also believe that the wave of robots will make them more and more popular and even become the engine of a new industrial revolution.
Gu Jie, founder and CEO of Fourier Intelligence, even said:
Humanoid robots may become the next generation of smart terminals, evolving from original mobile phones into walking mobile phones, and then into large walking models. This trend will require a good carrier to bring about a major breakthrough in productivity.
We need robots, but should they really be in human form?
The earliest human concept of "robot" comes from the play "R.U.R." written by the famous Czech writer Karel Čapek in 1920. The word is derived from the Czech word "robota", which means "forced labor". It originally referred to serfs who were forced to work under the feudal system, and in the play it is a metaphor for assembly line workers.
Still from the 1921 performance of R.U.R. in Prague
This is indeed the case in reality, with a large number of assembly line jobs being replaced by robotic arms and robots. The application of new robots is also mostly concentrated in industrial scenarios, such as the Figure 02 we mentioned earlier, which is "born and put into the factory".
But it is not difficult to find that these tasks can basically be completed by hands, and most robots rarely use their lower limbs and torso.
It seems that many times when we need a robot, what we need is a movable intelligent body. As long as it can meet the needs, whether it is in human form does not affect its actual use.
So why do we still place so much importance on robots in human form?
From a practical point of view, the various operating standards and tools accumulated by various industries have been customized according to human usage habits. Therefore, a humanoid robot can seamlessly integrate into human work and life scenes faster and better than a multi-legged or multi-wheeled robot.
Figure 02「Working in a factory」
Our preference for robots obviously goes beyond this. In fact, the root of human’s love for humanoid robots is human’s fascination with their own group.
This obsession is one of the sources of all human creation. Plato once said in Protagoras:
Man is the measure of all things, the measure of the existence of things that exist, and the measure of the non-existence of things that do not exist.
The "non-existence scale of non-existent things" he mentioned is actually the creation of human beings.
This explains why the ancient Greeks were so keen on sculptures of gods with near-perfect proportions - this "narcissism" reflects the ancient Greeks' high regard for their self-image, as well as their deep pursuit of order, perfection and ideals.
This fascination has continued at every stage of human development and is also present in all fields of art, humanities, and science and technology.
During the Renaissance and the Enlightenment, humans placed humanity above religion, as Shakespeare said:
Human beings are the essence of the universe and the most intelligent creatures.
This "tradition" continues to this day, when technology has once again given humans the ability to "create", and humans create artificial objects in their own image - that is, human-shaped robots.
This point is very concentrated in science fiction literary works, from "Blade Runner" to "Robot Butler", from "Artificial Intelligence" to "Her", from "My Robot Girlfriend", "Automata", "Ex Machina" to "Alita: Battle Angel", embodied artificial intelligence represented by robots as lovers, enemies, servants and friends of mankind, and robots as a medium for discussing the relationship between humans and technology, humans and society, has become a major theme of science fiction films.
Scene from the movie Ex Machina
The humanoid machine’s intelligent “heart” is the complete form of artificial intelligence
And this is just the tip of the iceberg. Hidden beneath the iceberg is our emotions.
We tend to give more emotions and trust to "humanoids" because they look more like ourselves. - As mentioned earlier in "R.U.R.", people sympathize with the hard work of humanoid robots, but it is difficult to directly sympathize with a mechanical arm.
This phenomenon, known in psychology as anthropomorphism, explains why we place higher expectations on humanoid robots and want them to better understand and respond to our needs.
This is especially true when facing something like AI that is difficult to understand and frightens people, and something like robots that easily create the "uncanny valley".
In 1981, CCTV broadcast a 52-level Japanese cartoon called "Astro Boy". Perhaps not many people will remember the specific plot, but many people still remember "Astro Boy with 100,000 horsepower, seven supernatural powers, and selfless and fearless".
Astro Boy in the film is smart, brave, and has a strong sense of justice. Except for his machine body, his behavior and thoughts are close to those of a human. He is a "modernized" little knight, but he occasionally shows some sorrows that only a human child can show.
In his setting, a "heart" is highlighted.
It is because he has a "heart" that he can have joy, anger, sorrow, and happiness like humans; because he has a "heart", he can decide his actions based on his own consciousness; because he has a "heart", he can grow through repeated trials; because he has a "heart", he firmly believes that humans and robots can be friends, and he is willing to believe in humans even though he is a robot.
Osamu Tezuka described it this way:
Even though people know it is man-made, they still feel life and have emotions.
This "heart" is our imagination and desire for robots, as well as our needs and ideals.
We created gods in our own image, and we will create intelligence in our own image.
Perhaps in the eyes of many people, these two are one and the same.
Robotics is not a technology, but an art.
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