How Chinese scientists develop versatile humanoid robots with AI 'big factory'

Humanoid robots, with broad development potential and application scenarios, are regarded as another disruptive product after personal computers, smartphones and new energy vehicles.

Last month, several "Q family" humanoid robot prototypes developed by the Institute of Automation, Chinese Academy of Sciences (CASIA), made a public debut in Beijing.

With different configurations, these humanoid robots vary in functions and characteristics.

A researcher gave a demonstration with the high-dynamic "Q1" robot that can receive instructions and complete tasks during an interview with China Media Group (CMG).

Based on the commands it receives, for example, "pick the starchiest vegetable" and "pick the spicy one," the robot can select the appropriate vegetable from a pile.

"We have trained the robot with large language models (LLMs) for two to three months," said Chen Meng, a senior engineer at CASIA. "Through visual recognition, it can autonomously apply logical reasoning to precisely identify which vegetable it needs to pick. Also, the visual recognition feeds back to the robot's movement, making it take the right vegetables from what we randomly placed."

The Q1 robot can also shoot arrows, which is very challenging for robots.

"The total weight of the two robotic arms is around 15 kilograms. When shooting an arrow, both its arms move to the front simultaneously, causing a significant forward tilt in its center of gravity. Then the robot needs to adjust its center of gravity by calibrating the motors in the hip and knee joints to maintain stable standing," said Chen.

When the bow is released, the sudden loss of force significantly impacts the robot, which requires adjusting the 12 motors in each hip joint and the seven motors in each robotic arm to counteract the impact, said Chen. "All of these adjustments have to be perfectly coordinated to enable a precise action of shooting an arrow."

The "Q family" humanoid robots also demonstrated how to recharge a cell phone and fetch drinks for their instructor.

"In my personal opinion, products that combine humanoid robots with LLMs will have many demonstrative applications in various fields, including home services, entertainment, scientific research, and manufacturing, within one to two years," said Lu Hao, an associate research fellow at the CASIA. "In the next three to five years, they may truly become a part of everyday life."

An AI-supported 'big factory' for robot manufacturing

Led by Qiao Hong, an academic at CAS and director of the state key laboratory of multimodal artificial intelligence systems, the research team developed a sophisticated "big factory" to design and assemble the humanoid robots.

"The factory is to use AI technologies to help us design a robot we need, and we only need to set the application scenarios and tasks we want," said Chen.

With AI technologies, the factory can automatically complete the robot's hardware design and software algorithm selection based on the requirements set by the researchers and adjust the parameters accordingly for an optimal design.

The whole process for an initial prototype design can be completed in under a minute, significantly shortening the current research and development period.

More intelligent with a greater variety of applications

China has witnessed a notable trend of developing more intelligent humanoid robots for use in industrial manufacturing, medical treatment, the service sector, emergency rescue, aerospace, and other fields.

However, three requirements must be met before they are widely used, namely high performance, low cost and mass production.

To make high-performance and low-cost products, Qiao said they have set up a research team dedicated to making components and parts. "We've been exploring how to replace some foreign components with our own domestically produced ones in order to further reduce costs," she said.

However, the most critical issue is the robot's capacity to work consistently. "Can we integrate software and hardware solutions to make the entire system high-performing, low-cost, and highly stable? If so, we can then move towards practical application," said Qiao.

China has sped up the industrialization of humanoid robots. In October 2023, the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology issued guiding opinions for the innovative development of humanoid robots, proposing to establish a preliminary innovation system for humanoid robots by 2025 and achieve breakthroughs in key technologies like the "brain, cerebellum and limbs" of robots.

It also aims to significantly improve the technological innovation capability of humanoid robots, establish a safe and reliable industrial supply chain and build an internationally competitive industrial ecology by 2027.