by releasing two generations of products in half a year, this humanoid robot company is trying to catch up with the "industry blowout"
2024-09-03
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zhang yichen, reporter of chao news client
"you are the best-looking humanoid robot in the exhibition hall." recently, at the world robot conference, the robot named "navigator 2 naviai" was praised by zhou hongyi, the founder of 360 group, who was visiting the site. at the conference, it can also transform into a salesperson to sell water on the spot, or give a speech with "excited eyebrows", attracting audiences to watch and experience it.
the "home" of this robot, zhejiang humanoid robot innovation center (hereinafter referred to as the "innovation center"), was only established in december last year, but "navigator 2 naviai" is already the second product they have released.
naviai, the navigator 2. photo provided by the interviewee
as xu xiaolan, president of the china electronics society, said: "my country's humanoid robot industry is on the eve of a 'blowout.'" according to a research report by cicc, by 2030, china's humanoid robot shipments are expected to reach 350,000 units, and the market space is expected to be close to 60 billion yuan.
eighteen years of hard work
in march this year, the newly established innovation center released its first product, the "navigator 1". the "navigator 1" is 150 cm tall and weighs 50 kg. the entire system is fully independently developed, and both the hardware and algorithm sides have achieved breakthroughs.
it is no problem for them to wipe the table, serve tea and water, and lift heavy objects with both hands. at the 2024 ningbo entrepreneurship and innovation awards ceremony, the two "navigator 1" interacted with the guests at the opening ceremony and successfully became the focus of the whole audience.
the humanoid robot that attracts both attention and fans is the result of the long-term hard work and accumulation of the relevant technical team. in their words, it is "18 years of hard work".
xiong rong, director of the innovation center, is also a professor at the school of control science and engineering of zhejiang university. the core members of the research team are also mainly from zhejiang university. "navigator 1" is an upgraded product based on zhejiang university's humanoid robot "wukong 4.0". the innovation center innovatively proposed a control method that integrates mechanism and learning.
in 2006, the technical team started with a 60-cm-tall small humanoid soccer robot. while winning the national championship for more than ten consecutive years and the runner-up in the robocup robot world cup humanoid group four times, it also began the long journey of exploring humanoid robots that took 18 years to develop.
since then, the team has successively developed a table tennis humanoid robot "wukong 1.0" that can achieve 145 rounds of human-machine confrontation and adapt to forehand, backhand and spin shots, and a new generation of indoor and outdoor fast and stable walking humanoid robots that can adapt to various terrains, thrust disturbances, and dynamic obstacle avoidance. in terms of robot walking technology and dexterous hand operation, the team has achieved remarkable results. the latest campus recruitment positions for the 2025 class announced by the innovation center focus on the algorithm direction, hoping to make further progress in this area in the future.
chu jian, the founder of zhongkong technology, who once served as xiong rong's former supervisor at the state key laboratory of industrial control technology, department of control, zhejiang university, also made great contributions to the establishment and development of the innovation center. as early as january 26, zhongkong technology and its related party ningbo yunyi increased the capital of the zhejiang humanoid robot innovation center, which had just been "one month old", by nearly 15 million yuan.
on august 19, zhongkong technology announced again that it plans to invest more than 350 million yuan in the innovation center with ningbo yunyi. after this round of financing, the corresponding valuation of the innovation center has exceeded 1.8 billion yuan.
world robot conference "shows off muscles"
on august 17, the innovation center officially released the "navigator 2 naviai" and brought it to the world robot conference for demonstration a few days later. the new generation of humanoid robots, which are 165 cm tall and weigh 60 kg, look more like humans.
"compared with the 'first generation' released five months ago, the new model released this time has new changes and breakthroughs in both appearance and technical details." xiong rong introduced. according to the parameters announced by the innovation center, the high-precision and lightweight humanoid arm can carry a single arm load of up to 5 kg, and the repeatability accuracy can reach 0.1 mm. the dexterous fingertips with 6 degrees of freedom have a force of 10n, and the joint speed can reach 150 degrees per second. the gpu equipped in "navigator 2 naviai" has an ai computing power of 275tops, or 275 trillion times per second.
photo provided by the interviewee
"naviai 2" also has four major characteristics: whole-body coordinated and stable walking, anthropomorphic whole-body imitation learning, humanoid embodied intelligent navigation, and general high-precision intelligent control. it can be used in security patrols, high-precision assembly, intelligent companionship and other scenarios or fields.
at present, the innovation center has cooperated with local companies in ningbo to explore the application of humanoid robots in home appliance parts assembly and sorting, home kitchens, and exhibition hall guidance and explanation.
however, xiong rong also said: "as a general-purpose robot, humanoid robots have a huge market potential. however, in the face of complex and changing environments and open and dynamic demands, it will take a long time to truly realize the commercialization of humanoid robots."
industrial agglomeration catalyzes technological progress
at the same time as the first generation product "navigator 1" was released, the zhejiang humanoid robot industry alliance preparatory committee was also established. the alliance is composed of 11 units including the innovation center, the ningbo institute of materials technology and engineering of the chinese academy of sciences, and zhichang technology group co., ltd., aiming to strengthen industrial collaboration, promote the research and development and application of humanoid robot technology, and build a complete industrial ecology.
in addition, the innovation center also signed a strategic cooperation framework agreement on the industrial chain with nine units including china electronics technology group corporation and supcon technology co., ltd.
the positive effects of industrial agglomeration are driving the research of the innovation center to bear fruit at full speed.
in ningbo, where the innovation center is located, the entire robot industry chain has taken shape, with more than 50 enterprises above designated size and an output value of about 8 billion yuan. when talking about the development trend of the humanoid robot industry, xiong rong said that there is an urgent need for high-performance, high-reliability, low-cost core components, key components and complete machine products. in addition, how to make good use of sensor data and integrate them well also requires the industry to give answers.
ningbo is one of the few cities in china that has a layout of the "three major components" of robot reducers, controllers, and servo motors. in the manufacturing of robot bodies, ningbo also covers the entire range of complete machines, including industrial robots, service robots, and special robots. at present, among the more than 100 companies that the innovation center has connected with the upstream of the industrial chain, more than 50 are located in ningbo.
at the same time, hangzhou, which has advantages in robot intelligent sensing and control technology research and complete machine systems, has also begun to deeply participate in the research and development of humanoid robots, realizing the complementary development of software and hardware, and further catalyzing the growth of the upstream and downstream industrial ecology.
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