Large model + humanoid robot, is it the next trend?

Recently, the combination of large models and robots has been very eye-catching, from the "embodied intelligence" proposed by the team of Professor Li Feifei of Stanford University to the "domestic light" of Yushu, Zhiyuan and other brands recently. At the 2023 World Robot Conference a few days ago, humanoid robots performed various skills on the spot, bringing science fiction into reality, and various companies moved their robot-related products to the scene to show off their skills. Afterwards statistics found that there were 160 domestic and foreign robot companies participating in the conference, and 600 robots, among which humanoid robots were the most popular. The famous founder of Boston Dynamics, Marc Raibert, and the famous Japanese roboticist Hiroshi Ishiguro traveled thousands of miles to attend the conference.

There is no doubt that humanoid robots are becoming a new hot spot in the capital market. In the primary market, BV Baidu Ventures, Jingwei, Hillhouse, Gaorong, Zhenge, etc. are actively researching on the front line. The venture capitalists who talked about big models in the first half of the year are now concerned about general-purpose robots. In the secondary market, humanoid robot concept stocks have been hyped for several waves. In May, Musk’s remarks directly caused the A-share robot concept “Saimo Smart” to rise to the limit, and “Fengli Smart” also rose by more than 150% within six trading days, and even attracted the attention of the Shenzhen Stock Exchange. It is required to explain the reason and rationality of the large increase in the stock price.

Tesla Push

At this year's Tesla shareholder meeting, Musk said: "The humanoid robot Optimus has significantly enhanced the control of motion and force, as well as environmental perception, and the technology is rapidly iterating. It is estimated that the demand for robots in the future may reach 10 billion , or even more. If the ratio of humans and robots is calculated as 2:1, then the demand for humanoid robots may be much greater than that of electric vehicles.” With these few words, Musk’s confidence, Enthusiasm and devotion quickly ignited the flame of the humanoid robot track, and the trend has intensified to this day. From the perspective of practical application, it may also be Tesla that promotes the maturity and perfection of the entire industrial chain.

Tesla's humanoid robot Optimus made its debut at the official 2022 AI Day event last year, and completed autonomous walking, turning around, stopping, waving and other actions on the spot. Most of Optimus' technologies are consistent with those of Tesla vehicles, such as machine vision, and the "brain" that processes visual data, makes action decisions, supports communication, and most importantly, is consistent with Tesla vehicles The chip is also equipped with the same FSD computer as the Tesla vehicle and the neural network technology related to Autopilot. It is expected that the final price will not exceed 20,000 US dollars, or about 144,000 yuan.

** From the perspective of practical technology, companies like Tesla have inherent advantages in making robots, because many basic principles of robots and AI are the same, and it can also be regarded as a natural extension of electric vehicles. Electric vehicles can Considered the first generation of four-wheeled robots**. Two years ago, when Musk proposed to make a robot, he attracted a lot of ridicule that he was "not doing business properly". However, at the beginning of this year, Li Auto's vision was to become the best AI and robotics company, not the world's largest electric vehicle company. It can be seen that dreams will also spread.

New directions for robots

Robots are not uncommon now. It is the task generalization ability that determines how far a humanoid robot can go. This is also the direction that many companies are making efforts. The "domestic lights" such as Yushu and Zhiyuan that have been mentioned before will not be repeated here. There are other start-ups that are also worthy of attention, such as Yuequan Bionics. The dexterity of its robotic products is already comparable to that of human hands. The human-like bionic intelligent dexterous hand independently developed by the company can be adjusted by active movement, flexion, flipping and other actions under external interference to keep the held object from falling. The official description of it is: "In addition to basic grasping, pressing and other actions, you can also complete 27 different complex and fine hand operations, such as using chopsticks to pick up small objects, apply skin care products, stir coffee, swipe mobile phones, unlock Buttons, etc." The dexterous hand adopts the drive technology of tension and compression body, which has a very high degree of freedom. At the same time, a flexible sensor is built in, with tactile neurofeedback.

In addition, there is the "Wukong-4" humanoid robot from the robotics team of the School of Control, Zhejiang University. According to reports, "Wukong-4" can adapt to various terrains such as outdoor roads, grass, and muddy roads, and the fastest forward speed can reach 6 kilometers per hour. , can also jump 0.5 meters high, and can also pass up and down 25-degree slopes and 10 cm high steps. Under unknown disturbances such as slippery road surfaces and external thrust disturbances, it can quickly restore balance and maintain stable walking. "Wukong-4" realizes the robot's three-dimensional environment map construction and autonomous dynamic navigation by integrating leg-foot movement technology and environmental perception technology.

Behind these new robots are a series of software and hardware technologies independently developed by enterprises and universities: humanoid robot bodies based on proprioceptive drives; self-developed high torque density modular joints and integrated structural design; high-strength alloys, carbon fibers and Advanced materials such as engineering plastics retain the beautiful appearance and improve the strength and stability of the structure; coupled with the large language model and advanced force control algorithm, it has high dynamic performance and can better understand human beings.

From the pursuit of investors, the entry of leading technology companies, to the innovative research of start-up companies and universities, humanoid robots are advancing in many directions and ushering in a new stage of development. For example, integrating a large model and equipping it with a brain is another key technical variable driving the upsurge of humanoid robots.

As I said before, "embodied intelligence" is "an intelligent body that has an actual body and supports physical interaction", which is equivalent to adding a body to AI, which belongs to a new development path for general-purpose robots. Capital is going to add more firewood to the industry. After five to ten years of large-scale investment, it will burn more vigorously, and finally realize the commercialization of general-purpose robots. ** For a long time in the past, the development of robots was limited to a specific type of work, just like AI, which was once equally limited. The large model is gradually developed to AGI, and the combination with the robot can naturally expand the application range of the robot. **

Compared with China, the progress abroad is one step faster, and the ability of the large model has been upgraded from the language to the execution layer. In July, the robots of Li Feifei's team could pull drawers, unscrew bottle caps, and weigh apples. The Robotics Transformer 2 (RT-2) launched by Google DeepMind at the end of the month continued to conduct in-depth research in the same direction. RT-2 is a brand new Vision + Language + Action (VLA) model that can learn from network and robot data and translate this knowledge into general instructions for robot control. RT-2 demonstrated better generalization, understanding beyond the semantic and visual domains of the robotic data it was exposed to, and was able to interpret new instructions and respond to commands by performing basic reasoning.

Doomed to be a bumpy road

As the saying goes, “Ideals are full, but reality is skinny.” While robots and AI are accelerating their development, there are still many practical technical and commercial challenges. It is said that the field of general robotics also needs technologies or products such as GPT-4 in order to combine multi-modal capabilities and truly unify the development of embodied intelligence. But this is not an easy task. The combination of robots and large models shown in current papers and some demos still focuses on solving interaction problems, but it does not mean that robots can become general-purpose robots after solving interaction problems. From the perspective of the development of robots, the large model does contribute but has limited impact on the underlying control and execution. At present, the academic community adopts AI-driven methods, and generally hopes to use the method of reinforcement learning as the underlying control implementation, but this has no direct relationship with the large model, and the control methods of reinforcement learning are not mature, and most of them are still in the academic research stage. .

Another difficulty lies in the co-evolution of software and hardware capabilities. Although many people believe that the combination of large models and robots will bring disruptive opportunities, Marc Raibert, founder of Boston Dynamics, said that hardware engineering and software are equally important in the development of robotics in the future. "Some people think that software can overcome all the problems and limitations of hardware. I don't agree with this view. Only the best hardware designers and software designers work together to design the best robots in the world."

In addition, security needs to be improved. The "AI illusion" of the large model may not have any substantial impact, but once it enters life, robots need to ensure accuracy and safety. These are the directions in which technology needs to be improved. Technology, scenarios, costs, safety, opportunities and challenges are coming at the same time, and humanoid robots are taking a crucial step towards the future.