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Mingmin from Aofei Temple
Quantum Bit | Public Account QbitAI

What level of expertise has attracted the attention of the CEO of Figure, the most popular AI robot overseas?

Domestic humanoid robot shows off its muscles, its latest skill isPlaying the piano, brewing Kung Fu tea... and flipping the spoon？！

Hold the bamboo in your hand, strike each string precisely and lightly to play beautiful music.

Skillfully brew a pot of Kung Fu tea,More than a dozen processes, and hold several cups and pots with ease.

Get a delicious waffle and get a homemade waffle maker as a gift.

"Leisure and leisure" can also take youPractice Wing Chun, isn’t this the robot version of Master Ye?

Please note that the above operations are all performed by robotsCompleted independently，Original speed display。

Not only are his hands super steady, but each movement is also smooth and seamless, as smooth as if he had eaten Dove chocolate.

Even a long and tedious task like making Kung Fu tea is clearly planned in its mind, with more than a dozen different steps, different materials such as ceramics, metals, wood, tea leaves, and different shapes of bowls, cups, pots, and cups, all mastered exactly.

This requires robots to be able to learn, plan and execute like humans, and have strong generalization capabilities and general intelligence.

The above is the Chinese humanoid robot officially released today.Astribot S1。

It was developed by startup Astribot, and it will be unveiled at the World Robot Conference in Beijing from August 21 to 25.Display to the public.

In April this year, S1's first technical demonstration caused considerable discussion at home and abroad with its dozens of showmanship moves that are difficult for robots but really useful for humans, including ironing and folding clothes, sorting and tidying up, flipping pots, vacuuming, and competitive cup stacking.

American netizens exclaimed: China's AGI-level robots shocked the entire industry!

In less than 4 months, Astribot S1 was officially released in the form of a complete machine. What has it done for you this time?

Doing housework, using tools, and performing martial arts decathlon

Among the skills of Astribot S1, a large part is what everyone cares about the most.Do houseworkThe slogan is:

You can travel without worries (go ahead), I will protect the warmth of the family. You can stay at home and relax (let me do it), I will help you enjoy life.

FirstMake waffles,warm.

The S1 can hold the spoon steadily to scoop out the batter and pour it into the waffle maker.

After it detects that the batter has spread all over the bottom of the pot, it grabs the handle and closes the lid.

In this process, the robotThe waist joint is very importantGrasping the open pot handle requires a leaning motion. If the robot's waist cannot cooperate with its upper arm, it will be difficult to complete this large forward movement.

Then turn the knob "on" to heat the batter.

While "grabbing" the fork to pick up the pancake, don't forget to show off your cool skill of "flipping" your wrist to flip the pancake.

Continue to challenge the long long long long processMake Kung Fu Tea,warm.

It not only tests the robot's fine operation, but also its intelligent planning when the complexity of the environment, tasks, and objects is intertwined.

Making tea generally involves multiple steps such as washing tea leaves, brewing tea, pouring tea, and dividing tea, and a variety of different tools are required for each step.

It needs to figure out which tools to use at each step, and it also has to grasp a range of completely different objects.

it takesReal-time force controlFor example, when scooping tea leaves from a ceramic cup, the ceramic is smooth and fragile, so it cannot be grasped with too much force; but the next action is to pick up a metal kettle to pour water, so the robot adjusts the force control in real time to ensure that it can pick up the kettle and pour water.

In addition, Astribot S1 can also use a vacuum cleaner. How does it know that arching the waist and exerting force on the thighs can reduce back pain? Maybe it goes to the gym often.

Feeding cats is so heartwarming.

EvenRemote cat play。

The owner only needs to put on the XR headset and play with his cat at the workstation, and get paid to pet the cat!

Astribot S1 will pass the deviceReal-time remote acquisition of human hand movement trajectory, and then calculates how to coordinate its arms based on the trajectory to ensure that it can effectively interact with cats at home without messing up the room or getting accidentally injured.

This requires the robot's motion system to be able to respond quickly and handle complex spatial relationships.

At the same time, Astribot S1 also smoothly reproducesMore expert skills。

for examplePlaying Yangqin。

Because the strings and bamboo are elastic, precise force control is required, and the robot mustImmediately and accurately feedback force and adjust the tapping angle in real timeIf you play too lightly, you won’t be able to touch the strings; if you play too hard, there will be noise; if you play too slowly, the rhythm will be disrupted. S1: It’s so hard for me…

Last time I threw a paper airplane, this timeShooting。

This action requires a robotWhole body posture coordinationAt the beginning, bend over and raise your elbows while holding the ball, then adjust your wrists as your waist gradually straightens, and finally use your waist and hands to shoot the basketball at the same time.

In the trailer, the dancers perform the seaweed dance and bend their waists to the extreme, showing their unlimited freedom.

Compared with the first technical demonstration three months ago, Astribot S1 has been working very well.

Not only has the range of movement and operation become larger, but the environment and tasks are also more complex and more sophisticated.

How does Astribot S1 accomplish these high-difficulty, long-sequence, and generalizable tasks?

High-value upper body + landing lower body

First of all, in terms of form, Astribot S1 adoptsHumanoid upper body + wheeled chassisroute.

Upper limb manipulation is gradually becoming the focus of embodied intelligence. In nature, animals that can work with their hands are basically mammals with a very high level of intelligence, and most human operations are completed with upper limbs and hands. Therefore, intelligent decision-making + manipulation of the upper body has become a core technical barrier to solving real needs and achieving practical application. When S1 was first launched in April, it was featured as the "strongest operation" among robots of the same specifications.

As for the lower body, which represents mobility, Stardust chose "Landable"The wheeled type has high stability, low energy consumption, and simple control. More importantly, humans spend most of their time living and working in a flat environment, such as homes, offices, factories, and shopping malls. Wheeled types can already cover a large part of the application scenarios.

The head, hands, and torso all adopt a modular design and can be flexibly assembled or disassembled according to different needs.

The S1's body is extremely human-like, with 7 degrees of freedom for each arm, the same as humans. The hand has 2 mechanical fingers that can complete most tasks, and a dexterous hand is also under development.

The movement and single-arm load capacity exceed those of an average human male, and the positioning accuracy reaches 0.03mm.

Efficient collection of multi-dimensional data breaks through the bottleneck of embodied intelligence

If we look at AI to determine the intelligence of robots, then AI depends on three major factors: data, algorithms, and computing power.

GPT can produce epoch-making breakthroughs only with tens of billions of training data, which are easily available on the Internet. However, there is almost no data directly available for training robots. Therefore, whether or not to obtain high-quality and sufficiently cheap data has become a bottleneck restricting the development of robots and an important means to widen the competition among companies.

Stardust has unique advantages in acquiring embodied intelligence data.

On the one hand, S1 can quickly learn from massive amounts of real-world video data and human motion capture data. In addition, S1 can also efficiently collect multi-dimensional, high-quality data from a first-person perspective, including vision, hearing, touch, and force, which are closest to the real world.

By integrating these high-quality data, Stardust can conduct more efficient large-scale training, while reducing the cost of collecting high-quality data for robots, the amount of data, and the difficulty of training new tasks, greatly improving generalization.

When continuously interacting with the real world, S1 canContinuously generate new "learning materials", so as to continue learning and evolving, and move towards general artificial intelligence. This is also the key to S1's ability to learn, think and execute like a human.

In terms of AI algorithms, loading large models enables S1 to have the ability to perceive, recognize, and make real-time decisions in complex environments, as well as intelligent understanding and multi-modal interactive execution capabilities, to achieve generalization of common operations at the object, task, and environment levels.

This means that S1 has the "strongest brain" and can adapt to new environments and new things more quickly, "learn by analogy", and "understand a hundred things".

Rigid-flexible coupling transmission is the strongest and safest to operate

The omnipotence of a robot depends greatly on its body, that is, the main body or hardware.

The "strongest operation" of S1 comes from its uniqueDesign of rigid-flexible coupling transmission mechanismBy installing sensors in the transmission process, S1 can monitor the transmission of force in real time. For example, when peeling a cucumber, it does not rely on trajectory estimation, but accurately senses the force when the peeling knife presses on the cucumber like a human, and then accurately controls the output of force. This special transmission structure significantly improves the operating accuracy.

It is worth mentioning that through the rigid-flexible coupling hardware design and innovative planning algorithm, S1 hasHigh securityThrough rigid-flexible coupling hardware design and innovative force planning algorithms, it can accurately control the force during interaction, without hurting people, objects, or itself during movement. Only when it is safe enough can it land.

Thanks to this carefully polished complete technical solution, the launch of Astribot S1 always gives people a sense of "astonishing technology".

The field of embodied intelligence is currently in a period of "letting a hundred flowers bloom". Not only are there many new robots, but each company's robot form and technology route also have their own merits.

How was the technical route of Astribot S1 formed?

Created by the number one employee of Tencent Robotics Lab

To answer this question, we need to start with the team behind Astribot S1.

Astribot was founded in December 2022; its name comes from the ancient Latin proverb "Ad astra per aspera", which means "through a difficult journey to reach the stars", representing the company's long-term plan and firm commitment to the popularization of AI robotics technology.

Founder and CEOLai Jie, has 16 years of experience in robot research and development and is a "veteran" in the field of AI and robotics. He joined Baidu in 2014 and later served as the head of the "Xiaodu Robot" team.

In 2018, Dr. Zhang Zhengyou, a world-renowned expert in computer vision and robotics and an outstanding scientist with the highest professional rank at Tencent, was planning to build Tencent RoboticsX robotics laboratory. Lai Jie joined as the No. 1 employee and later led the development of the wheel-legged robot Ollie.

Another founder of Stardust IntelligenceDai Yuan, received a bachelor's degree from UIUC and a doctorate from UCLA, focusing on robot perception. She has published more than 30 papers in top journals such as Nature Comm and Science Adv, and holds more than 70 robot patents. Like Lai Jie, she also joined the newly established RoboticsX in 2018.

Thanks to my experience in Tencent RoboticsX Robotics Lab,Stardust Intelligence attaches great importance to the "hardware and software integration" capability of Design for AI, and also built a team structure similar to RoboticsX, with half of the people focusing on the robot itself, and the other half emphasizing the use of AI algorithms for perception and motion control, in order to explore the strong coupling of AI and robots.

Most of the teams also come from companies such as Tencent, Google, Huawei, DJI, and top domestic and foreign universities and artificial intelligence research institutes.

Let billions of people have AI robot assistants

Since its inception, Stardust Intelligence's vision has beenLet billions of people have AI robot assistants。

Such robot assistants must be able to learn, think and work like humans, interact with people fluently and intelligently, use human tools and equipment, and help people complete boring, difficult or dangerous tasks. Only in this way can they continuously expand the boundaries of application scenarios and lead the "AI+robot" technological innovation.

The company will soon completeTens of millions of dollarsThe Pre-A round of financing was led by Matrix Partners, followed by industrial capital such as Daotong Investment and Qinghui Investment, and oversubscribed by old shareholder Yunqi Capital.

From the technical demonstration in April to the full machine release in August, Stardust also announced that it will be commercialized within 2024. And through the self-developed key components, S1 has obvious cost advantages and price competitiveness.

In short, Stardust Intelligence is moving very fast in all aspects.

The fastest is probably the robot itself. In April, founder and CEO Lai Jie said:

Welcome everyone to make requests for S1!
In this way, its ability can grow from 55%, 85% to 99.99%, infinitely close to the human level.

The ability to practice Wing Chun demonstrated in the previous article may have come from the netizen in April, and it has now been realized.

So what do you hope S1 can do for you?

Comments are welcome!