At the just-concluded 2022 World Robot Conference, humanoid bionic robots became the most popular type of robots on the show floor because of their bionic and high degree of intelligence.Since Tesla and Xiaomi announced the launch of humanoid bionic robots one after another, the field has received even more attention.What can the current humanoid bionic robots do?
Robots are roughly divided into industrial robots, service robots and special robots, and humanoid robots belong to service robots. At present, the production of domestic humanoid robots is only about 100 units or less, and the scenes that have been landed are not only service guides, exhibition performances, etc., but also basic service work such as end coffee and beverage vending have been realized in the market.
The humanoid robot is a very complex systemic structure, which simply needs both a smart brain and relatively flexible limb joints. At present, for manufacturers developing humanoid robots, the robot's brain, i.e., AI interaction algorithms and other aspects are basically developed by themselves, but in terms of limbs, good parts are needed to support them. Like industrial robots, servo motors, reducers, and controllers are also the core components of humanoid robots.
Industry insiders said that, compared with industrial robots, humanoid robots have more joints, each joint requires the corresponding motor and reducer, and the demand is 10 times more than industrial robots, once the mass production of humanoid robots, the demand for parts will also be a significant pull.
In a recent paper, Tesla CEO Musk shared the latest details of Tesla's humanoid robot, which he said could be used for both industrial production and to serve thousands of households, and Musk also said that the robot Optimus would be worth more than the electric car and fully automated driving business.
Tesla robot vision goal is to make it serve thousands of households, such as cooking, mowing the lawn, taking care of the elderly, etc.. According to Musk, a future home robot could be cheaper than a car.
Humanoid robots are mainly dominated by two camps, represented by Japan's home care, human contact-friendly robots, which had launched two representative products, one is SoftBank's pepper, one is Honda's Asim.
The representative product of the European and American camps is Boston Dynamics Atlas, these robots often have very strong bouncing ability, anti-hitting ability, and its motor coordination is also particularly strong, mainly for some outdoor handling, logistics, and some relatively high-risk environment instead of manual and military use in some fields, etc.
Data show that the global robotics market will exceed 350 billion yuan in 2022, and the figure is expected to grow to 1.7 trillion yuan by 2030. The industry generally recognizes that the addition of technology giants to the industry may force rapid technological progress.
