fourier releases a new generation of universal humanoid robot, gu jie: gpt moment may arrive in three to five years
2024-09-27
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"the gpt moment for truly universal robots has not yet arrived...but the dawn has already been seen. it will not happen in 10 or 20 years, but within three to five years."
on september 26, fourier intelligent released a new generation of self-developed general-purpose humanoid robot gr-2. fourier founder and ceo gu jie made the above statement in a recent interview.
gu jie, founder and ceo of fourier.
the gr-2 released by fourier has been improved in many key aspects such as hardware, design, and development framework. the appearance follows the bionic design of the first-generation product gr-1. the height has increased to 175cm, the weight reaches 63kg, the whole body has 53 degrees of freedom, and the single-arm movement load is 3kg. at the same time, the battery capacity has doubled, the battery life has been extended to 2 hours, and a detachable battery replacement solution has been added on the basis of supporting direct charging.
upper limb operation is the next major battlefield for the humanoid robot industry to actively promote commercialization. domestic and foreign humanoid robot companies, including figure, have recently launched new products equipped with dexterous hands, and some even directly sell dexterous hands separately. a practitioner told the paper: “there has been a huge demand for dexterous hands recently.”
gr-2 also brings an upgrade to the dexterous hand this time. the degrees of freedom of one hand are increased from 6 in the first generation to 12. it is also equipped with 6 array tactile sensors and motion control algorithms, which can better simulate the human hand. natural movement. at the same time, gr-2 is also equipped with a new generation actuator, the encoder accuracy is doubled, and the maximum joint peak torque exceeds 380n.m.
gu jie said that the application fields of humanoid robots will still be mainly concentrated in industry, health care, welcome services and some dangerous work fields. fourier’s focus will be on promoting the productization process of robots, hoping to create epoch-making products with generalizability.
previously, fourier's humanoid robots have also entered saic-gm's jinqiao luxury car factory and altenon gigafactory for "internships" to carry out work such as installation of live high-voltage parts and high-precision operations.
so where will the next technological breakthrough point for humanoid robots be? gu jie said,what we are most looking forward to is the large multi-modal model that can be run on the robot body. no pre-programming is required, but it is directly end-to-end. after obtaining external visual, auditory or tactile information, it can be directly output to complete the task.
he said that differences will begin to appear in the industry only after breakthroughs are made in the combination of robots and ai. before that, "the ontology must be done well, it must have the potential to carry ai, algorithms and tasks, and the body must be in good health, otherwise it may lead to a situation where the 'brain' is healed but the body is found to be in poor condition."
according to gu jie's prediction, the ontology will be upgraded by 1-2 generations in the next 3-5 years, making the robot lighter, stronger, more flexible and more stable.
gu jie told the paper that the “endgame” of humanoid robots may be like electric vehicles. there are still many manufacturers of electric vehicles on the road. different brands, prices and positionings will lead to the emergence of many different ecologies. at the same time, like mobile operating systems, several giants such as android and ios may eventually emerge. these giants can provide relatively complete ontologies and also have certain ai capabilities.
zhou jian, the founder of ubtech, also talked about the ecology in a previous interview. he said: "hardware is never the threshold. it is the form of hardware that serves as the terminal and generates the collected future data. after a more accurate definition of user portraits, providing better services and content is the threshold. this is the difference between nokia and apple...the most important thing is to be able to quickly find and meet the corresponding needs in different segments and scenarios.”
fourier's new generation general humanoid robot gr-2.
regarding the price issue that is of great concern to all walks of life, gu jie said that "humanoid machines are far from the time to start a price war." at present, more attention should be paid to how to make the product more mature and able to truly generate value. industry insiders have previously expressed the same view to reporters from the paper. the most important thing in current application scenarios is to allow humanoid robots to "create value."
this also cannot avoid the topic that has been discussed in the field of humanoid robots, whether it should be "bipedal" or "wheeled". gu jie believes that the final form will be diversified, and shuangfei will have certain advantages after achieving breakthroughs in algorithm and mass production.
it can be seen that at the recent world robot conference (wrc), the beijing humanoid robot innovation center announced its official name change to "beijing embodied intelligent robot innovation center". after the name change, the research and development field will be expanded into the entire industry chain of embodied intelligence. taking humanoid robots as the best practice, it is backward compatible with the research on embodied intelligence of full-configuration robots.
according to reports, the current delivery volume of fourier humanoid robot gr-1 has exceeded 100 units, and the industry is expected to reach more than 1,000 units in 2025, but the specific target is still difficult to predict.
the paper reporter qin sheng
(this article is from the paper. for more original information, please download the “the paper” app)
