Xinhua Finance Shanghai, December 28th (Reporter Wang He and Wang Zhao) "Artificial Intelligence+" is expected to become a new strategic opportunity for the automotive industry. On the 26th, GAC Group released its independently developed third-generation embodied intelligent humanoid robot GoMate in Shanghai. GoMate is a full-size wheeled humanoid robot that can be widely used in security, healthcare, automotive aftermarket, logistics, education, and other scenarios.
Zhang Aimin, the head of the robot research and development team of GAC Group, introduced that GoMate is a new "intelligent tool" created by GAC Group for future life. The company has formulated a clear mass production plan, and by 2025, self-developed components will be sold globally in batches. The GoMate machine will be demonstrated and applied in different industries. By 2026, the machine will complete small-scale production and gradually expand to large-scale production.
Automakers flock to the humanoid robot race track
The trend of AI is becoming increasingly fierce in the automotive industry. Not only Guangzhou Automobile Group, but also several automotive companies have recently entered the field of humanoid robots, becoming heavyweight players in the industry by "crossing boundaries".
BYD, the car company with the highest sales of new energy vehicles, invested in star startup Zhiyuan Robotics last year. Recently, BYD released recruitment information for its embodied intelligence research team, which includes algorithm based deep learning, control algorithms, servo drives, and structural humanoid, bipedal, quadrupedal, and multimodal mechanical structures. BYD officially entered the embodied intelligence industry.
The figure shows the third-generation embodied intelligent humanoid robot GoMate independently developed by GAC Group
Recently, car companies such as Xiaopeng Motors, Chery Automobile, and Changan Automobile have publicly announced their layout in this field
Xiaopeng Motors released its independently developed AI humanoid robot Iron in November. The robot 'brain' adopts the self-developed Turing AI chip by Xiaopeng Motors, with a computing power of 3000T. Iron robots have been put into production training for P7+models at Xiaopeng Motors' Guangzhou factory.
Chery Automobile has collaborated with AI company Aimoga to develop the humanoid robot Mornine, and has set the role of a guide for Mornine's first stage entry-level store.
Changan Automobile recently announced on an investor interaction platform that the company will carry out industrial layout related to humanoid robots, automotive ecological robots, etc. It plans to invest more than 50 billion yuan within 5 years to lay out three-dimensional transportation solutions for sea, land, and air, as well as the field of humanoid robots, and release humanoid robot products before 2027.
On the evening of the 25th, Li Xiang, the chairman and CEO of Ideal Auto, who had not appeared for a long time, stated that he regards artificial intelligence as "the whole of the future" and that Ideal Future will 100% make humanoid robots. He believes that cars will evolve from industrial transportation tools to space robots in the era of artificial intelligence. Ideal is an artificial intelligence enterprise. What we need to do is not the intelligence of cars, but the automation of artificial intelligence
"I'm glad to see more and more auto companies plan to enter the flying car and humanoid robot track at the end of the year, and now it may be equivalent to the mobile Internet in 2007, or new energy in 2012." He Xiaopeng, chairman and CEO of Xiaopeng Auto, said.
Resonance between technology and supply chain
The development and application of AI technology have brought comprehensive changes to the road of automotive intelligence, and humanoid robots are a market hotspot and a new starting point for the automotive industry.
Not long ago, Huang Renxun, founder and CEO of Nvidia, a benchmark enterprise of artificial intelligence, publicly said that three robot applications that are expected to achieve mass production in the future are autonomous vehicle, unmanned aerial vehicles and humanoid robots.
This viewpoint has become a global industry consensus.
Jin Qiao, the director of Wuhan Artificial Intelligence Research Institute, said that autonomous driving is the most important carrier for the landing of embodied intelligence artificial intelligence models, and two years later it will be humanoid robots. Both of these fields have a market size of 10 trillion yuan.
ARK Invest, a US based fund that focuses on technology innovation investment, said, "Tesla is envisioning humanoid robots that surpass human capabilities. According to our research, if humanoid robots are put into large-scale use, they can generate $24 trillion in revenue in the future
The next stage of the automotive industry will enter a comprehensive AI driven competition, "said Zhang Yongwei, Vice Chairman and Secretary General of the China Electric Vehicle Hundred People's Congress. The technological highland of the automotive industry and the strategic competitive pivot of automotive enterprises are rapidly shifting towards AI driven intelligence. The past competitiveness is no longer sufficient to support the next step of automotive enterprise development, and future development must be based on the highland and pivot, establishing an AI driven intelligent development system, and achieving strategic migration.
Zhang Yongwei said that based on the automotive technology chain and industry chain, further development of aggregated intelligent industries, represented by embodied intelligence or humanoid robot technology, will bring unexpected spillover effects.
Automobiles are standardized carriers capable of carrying AI models of the physical world, and there may be more forms of robots and embodied intelligence in the future, "said Tao Ji, Chief Intelligent Driving Technology Officer of Changan Automobile.
At present, humanoid robot players mainly include automotive companies, technology companies, home appliance companies, startups, etc. The most important reason why car companies can enter the humanoid robot race smoothly is that intelligent cars and humanoid robots have strong synergy and resonance in software and hardware underlying technologies, supply chain systems, and production processes.
Industry insiders introduce that there are many similarities between the technologies of car companies in the fields of autonomous driving, sensors, machine vision, and artificial intelligence and the development of humanoid robots. There is a lot of overlap in the supply chain. At the same time, car factories are also important scenarios for the application of humanoid robots, which can form a commercial closed loop of research and development, manufacturing, and application, and can overflow to more application scenarios, accelerating the commercialization of humanoid robots.
Huaxi Securities' report points out that humanoid robots are expected to achieve a 0-1 process by 2025, and Tesla is expected to lead the mass production landing process. Humanoid robots are expected to first break through B-end scenarios such as industrial manufacturing and commercial services in the short term, and gradually break through more complex scenarios such as extreme operations and home services in the medium and long term.
Huaxi Securities believes that the environmental perception module, motion control module, and human-computer interaction module are the core of the development of humanoid robots. From the perspective of segmented investment tracks, two dimensions need to be considered: added value and localization rate. In terms of domestic substitution dimensions, the penetration rate of domestic products such as planetary roller screws, hollow cup motors, and six dimensional torque sensors is still relatively low, and the future space is huge.