Talking about AI robot in reality and those in the films

Over the past two decades, films and shows like Westworld, Prometheus, and Ex Machina have explored sentient characters that are alarmingly indistinguishable from their human counterparts, along with formless, all-encompassing consciousness and deep learning machines.

A world-renowned roboticist at SoftBank Robotics, Angelica Lim, said, "I kind of get angry at that stereotype of the father figure of A.I., especially because it's a guy. It's so false."

"There's a common platform called Robot Operating System, or ROS. It's a way for roboticists to share software with each other to build all of these different functionalities for their robots, whether they're coming from India or Europe or Japan," Lim continued.

"People are contributing this open-source software to other artificial intelligent robots to allow robots to navigate in different environments and be able to detect obstacles. It's coming from thousands of people, so it's most certainly not one person building robots and A.I. It's a community. There are so many different specialties that have to go into robotics. From electrical engineers to mechanical engineers, to firmware engineers, low-level and high-level software engineers, even designers, artists, linguists, and animators are all working to build these machines."

Ryan Wu, CMO of QIHAN Technology, which was awarded as one of the Top 10 APAC Robotic Process Automation Companies 2017 because of its Sanbot intelligent robot, claimed that, “Sanbot is the only social robot with centralized management capabilities and therefore opens the door to a world of immense possibilities.”

In film, humans and robots appear to fluidly walk and work among one another when in reality most robots are learning to take their first awkward baby steps.

"On TV you see robots just walking around interacting with people like you normally would. Sometimes robots can't tell it's a human, they can't see their face. They're just not very smart yet. On TV there are these interesting demos, but most of the time they are controlled by humans. It's almost like a trick, and it's giving an impression that's not quite there," said Lim.

“Humanoid service robots are becoming more common and more diverse. They will soon become a common form of interface to A.I. and will be refined into a new kind of computer animation, like computer animation for movies, with the difference of being physically embodied," said David Hanson, Founder and CEO of Hanson Robotics Limited.

Has the film industry hit the ceiling regarding their portrayal of artificial intelligence, robotics and humanoids? Is the human race ready to decide such matters regarding the responsibility and issues that such a scientific, progressive undertaking involves? For now, we will have to find contentment while still working out the glitches with Siri and Alexa. While the films we love may inspire or predict such challenges, it looks like we still have a few reels of our own left in which to figure that out.

China Daily: AI and intelligent robot mutually promoting and developing together

Artificial intelligence has never been integrated so closely into robotics, as domestic competitors on the market are gearing up to be at the forefront in the race towards a smarter and more automated journey.

Wang Peng, vice-general manager at the marketing division of Shenzhen-based Qihan Technology Co, said as AI tackles learning, perception, problem-solving, logical reasoning and many other related issues, the new technology will absolutely make robots smarter.

"AI technologies can enable robots to mimic some level of human intelligence, such as the ability of perception and thinking. And the artificial intelligent robot will be the best carrier for AI technologies."

"The AI-enabled robots are able to assist in humans' daily work, enabling people to spend their energies on more creative jobs, such as art and education."

With multiple patents in several fields, including robotics and AI, Qihan Technology focuses on the developing the commercialization of AI-enabled service robots. Founded in 2006, the company now aims to use next-generation robotics and AI technologies to improve quality of life and business productivity for consumers.

Wang said the company is working on expanding its portfolio of "robotics-as-a-service" solutions. Thanks to the open application program interface platform, the Sanbot service robot, powered by Qihan Technology, can be customized for different scenarios in many fields, including retail, hospitality, education and healthcare.

During the World Robot Conference held in Beijing last month, Qihan unveiled new intelligent, cloud service robots called Sanbot King Kong. The 1.5-meter high humanoid robot features bionic arms, advanced navigation and is able to carry 75-kilograms. Equipped with a four-wheel drive system, the Sanbot King Kong can move at up to five meters per second, exceeding the average human walking speed.

Qian Dongqi, chairman of the Suzhou-based Ecovacs Robotics Co said as a new era of AI is coming, there will be infinite possibilities to develop the humanoid service robots.

"The AI technologies will enable more abilities for the robots, and the robots can provide the best application scenarios for the AI. And I believe a qualified robot must be equipped with AI."

Wang, agreed, saying the company will work with more partners to build a better environment for developers and then enable more robot applications on the market.

Sanbot Elf Robot cheered up the New Material Industrial Chain Summit

On August 17th, the "Exploring Guangdong-Hong Kong-Macao Greater Bay Area & Ploughing New Material Industry ”Summit, themed by “New Material Science and Technology Field Research &   Application of the Achievement of Thermoelectric Materials and Printed Optoelectronics Technologies” was held in Bao’an District, Shenzhen. The summit was sponsored by the Wuhan Polytechnic Institute of Shenzhen and the Shenzhen Baoan District Industrial Investment Guidance fund Co., Ltd. the Shenzhen Baoan District Science and Technology Innovation Bureau, and the Shenzhen New Material Industry Association.

However, how does one get tickets to this event? The superstar intelligent service robot of the AI world, Sanbot Elf, developed by QIHAN Technology was invited to help customers greeting and reception duties. As soon as guests walked up to the entrance, they were greeted by the cute, intelligent humanoid robot, which helped the guests sign in for the event, with its state-of-the-art facial recognition technology. A personal greeting by the artificial intelligent robot is warm and surprised to guests. At the same time, Sanbot was keeping track of the number of guests entering the venue, which helped the hosts know how many guests showed up to the event.

During the registration process, Sanbot showed guests the whole new technological fashion and the extraordinary technological abilities of robotics. Many guests were very impressed with Sanbot’s capabilities. The robot’s cute appearance and impressive technology attracts many fans and people were lining up to take pictures with the advanced AI robot and discuss cooperation with QIHAN Technology.  

At the subsequent process of the conference, government officials, researchers, and businesses brainstormed together on how to best utilize the cutting-edge technology and new technology in new material industry. They also discussed in depth on how to promote new industries.

There is a mutual understanding that the new material industry chain is key industry for the Guangdong-Hong Kong-Macao Greater Bay Area, and the bay areas are at the forefront of reform and economic growth. On July 1st, Chinese President Xi Jinping witnessed the signing of “Deepening the cooperation construction framework agreement among Guangdong-Hong Kong-Macao.” This further solidifies the strategic position of the bay area. Sanbot service robot witnessed this historic moment in the step to a boom in economic growth for this area.

IFA 2017: China manufacturers boosting service robots to the world

BERLIN — Chinese manufacturers are fast establishing themselves in the up-and-coming service robot industry, known to be the domain of Japanese rivals.

At the IFA consumer electronics trade show currently underway here, about 90% of the companies featuring intelligent service robots hail from China. One of them is Shenzhen's Qihan Technology, which unveiled the Sanbot Nano home companion robot for the first time at the expo.

The roughly 70cm Sanbot Nano can understand voice commands and be directed to sing, order pizza or change the TV channel. The automaton also comes with an onboard camera allowing the owner to monitor the house remotely via smartphone. The advanced AI robot for home will hit stores in October, aimed to English-speaking countries & areas. 

Compatriot Hangzhou Amy Robotics revealed details of software that lets users of the Amy A1 robot program various customer service functions. The skill set includes guiding customers to rooms and taking orders at restaurants. Amy Robotics says its robot can help control rising labor costs in China. The company is also ramping up business in Western nations and the Middle East.

Shanghai PartnerX Robotics is putting out miniature programmable robots for education that kids can put together themselves. They come with a simple programming language for controlling movements.

Chinese companies are pouring resources into artificial intelligence robotics as demand for labor-saving techniques climbs amid a graying population and rising wages. The government has also encouraged the growth of the robotics industry, making it a part of its Made in China 2025 initiative.

Many observers say that the quality of Chinese-made robots is still a work in progress. But the speed at which mainland companies are acquiring technological expertise is reportedly exceeding expectations. Chinese appliance giant Midea Group bought German industrial robot maker Kuka just last year. 

For advanced service robots, the global market is expected to double to $20 billion in 2022, according to Indian corporate intelligence firm Market Research Future.

China Artificial Intelligence and Robotics Innovation Conference 2017 to be held in Beijing

Themed by “Intelligent Innovation, Intelligent Manufacturing, Intelligent Fusion”, China Artificial Intelligence and Robotics Innovation Conference 2017 will be held on September 2^nd in Beijing.

The goal of this conference is to promote a healthy and sustainable growth of China’s AI and robotics industries, expand cut-edge technologies, industry dynamics and enterprise experience and improve the influence of Chinese AI and Chinese intelligent robots in the world.

Artificial Intelligence is a challenging field and research in this field is especially difficult. For over half a century, people have been trying to prove theoretical theories and solving the technical difficulties of AI. In recent years, great progress has been made and new thought, now concept new theory and technology have been coming out in this field, which is becoming an important source for a new wave of science.

China Artificial Intelligence and Robotics Innovation Conference 2017 will provide a platform for all participants to discuss how to enhance the level of independent research and development of artificial intelligence and advanced AI robot in China and practical abilities. This includes independent IT industrial systems and a basic industry capability. Promoting machine learning, intelligent manufacturing, and a Smart life are also included. The conference also focused on in-depth applications and industrial transformation in the fields of intelligent industries and National Defense Security, as well as analyzing the development trend in the industrial environments of AI and artificial intelligence robotics through intensive research. All of this is to help enterprises seize these rare development opportunities, which is helping many industries and further helping the robotics industry towards success.

The highlights of the forum were: Meeting and listening to top AI experts in person, sharing new perspectives about new technology, discussing the robotics industry and its future, AI, the development of the fusion of Big Data, research and production, well-known representatives from various enterprises, and the development and direction of “Made in China 2025.” To discuss this roadmap, 300+ robotics and AI experts shared their ideas.

Attendees included: Internet company executives, AI and robotics companies, technology specialists, entrepreneurs and other C-Level executives interested in using robotics, venture capitalists, AI consultants, technology solution providers, domestic smart equipment/robotic firms, robotics industry distributors, programmable autonomous robots/equipment integrators, intelligent industry robot chains/ VC/ servo systems/ driver systems/ and core suppliers, well-known media channels, and local government leaders.

In the future, AI technology will further promote deep integration of similar technology, emerging technologies, and new industries, and promote the revolution of IT.The China Artificial Intelligence and Robotics Innovation Conference extends an invitation to you and looks forward to working with you about the AI and Robotics industry for the future together, usher in the era of intelligence.

Intel: The Integration of AI and SI Makes Robot Industry Grow and Prosper

Song Zhiqiang, the Dean ofIntel Labs China, ILC, claimed the integration of artificial intelligence  (AI) and smart interaction (SI) would make intelligent robot industry burst out. The whole article is as follows.

Today, we are embracing a new world of Internet of Everything. More and more things and equipment have achieved interconnection through network, which makes data outbreak. Data surges like a blood and has becoming the most important driving force in the technical field. Artificial intelligence, automatic drive, 5G, VR / MR and a series of forward-looking technology, give us the opportunity to fully release the potential of these data, and constantly upgrade the human life experience.

We would like to share and communicate with you about Intel's observation of forward-looking technology, and investigate the present and the future of Internet of Everything. Let us begin from the perspective of robot and artificial intelligence to find out industry opportunities in the era of data deluge.

As the most important application area of artificial intelligence, robot has been always paid high attention. Intelligent humanoid robots appeared in Hollywood blockbuster give the public high expectations. However, the intelligent capability of real intelligent service robot is far from that in the movie. With the trend of artificial intelligence promoted by deep learning, it has become a very important issue how intelligent robot industry breaks out. I think there are two key aspects: one is the deep integration of AI and SI; the other is the security of intelligent robots. We'll take about the security later, and now let's focus on the integration of AI and SI.

In the academic world, AI has a commonly-used definition, is to understand the essence of intelligence, and be able to produce a kind of intelligent machine that can respond to external input, similar with human being. The ultimate goal of this discipline is to give the machine intelligent reaction capacity, so advanced AI robot can be seen as the ultimate goal of artificial intelligence.

There are two ways to understand the essence of intelligence: One is to speculate how people is thinking in an intelligent way from the observers' behaviors by virtue of philosophical or psychological methods; the other is to cut apart human brain to check the neuro anatomical structure, and find out the laws of intelligent activities through brain activity detection technology and well-designed experiments.

We have a knowledge of intelligence (not exactly right, but at least the model comes out), but how to make the machine smart need? It needs mathematicians, computer scientists and automation experts to study thoroughly. Therefore, there are many disciplines related to artificial intelligence. Besides soft theory, models and algorithms, it also needs the practice of hardware. For example, intelligent machine needs chips to provide it with a strong computing and storage ability. In addition, advanced humanoid robot requires the technical support of complex system control, either.

In fact, this wave of artificial intelligence is also benefiting from the improvements of calculations and storage technology. ANN is to train machine with massive data, and then machine learns about the inherent laws from the data and build a model, finally, the model will help to speculate new data. This is called a machine learning process. It requires a lot of storage and computing power, but now we are living in an extraordinary appropriate era of machine learning's big development.

Sanbot creates an entirely new business model in America

“One new player in the robot arena seems particularly well-poised to lead the acceleration via an interesting offering that could be a true game-changer in service and create an entirely new business model in the United States in the process”. That is what Forbes wrote about Sanbot robot.

Robot marketing and businesses are getting bigger by the moment, but it seems there are two major opposing camps.  The Anti-Robot team is fearful and sees them as nothing but controversial, while more are embracing the intelligent robots as industry saviors. Dubai in the UAE has use a robot to interview police candidates. Yes, it is Sanbot programmable humanoid robot with voice interaction powered by IBM Watson.

QIHAN Technology just released a Multi-Service Platform System (MPS) for its Sanbot robot that is unprecedented. The system actually enables businesses to manage hundreds of Sanbot robots from anywhere through its cloud-enabled, centralized system that brings personalized communications services to companies worldwide via an intelligent, cloud-enabled humanoid service robot.

Businesses can customize and create tasks for Sanbots on PC, Tablet or Smartphone over Qihan Cloud using an open API. Operators can then upload and share customized marketing content, audio, video or text files, all remotely. QIHAN Technology firmly believes that service robots are the ideal solution in retail, hospitality, education and healthcare, and that more and more businesses are turning to robots to facilitate their activities.

With the advanced hardware and software with Cloud service, the robot can capture and analyze data to help better decipher customer behavior since they can actually capture customer interaction via live stream or in a recorded manner. Such information can take marketing initiatives to an entirely new level.  And the intelligent service robotics is so good that any unauthorized actions detected will be sent by the robot via mobile phone or PC to business owners immediately.

The leading innovation expert lec Ross explains it best in his book, The Industries Of The Future.  In this work he explains that robot adoption rate in U.S. culture is slow based on a deep fear of a potential "threat of humanity creating things we cannot control."

But if QIHAN Technology has its way, it seems that any fears will be overcome.

"We see a massive opportunity in America as the market continues to usher in new use cases from security to retail and telepresence," says Ryan Wu, Vice President of QIHAN Technology. "As robotic features advance, including hardware and AI, interactions between human and robots will become the norm, much like the introduction of social media and the on-demand economy have transformed our lives over the past ten years."

He continues, "Today, we live in an 'always connected' world and demand that technology matches our fast paced life. Intelligent robots like Sanbot are able to meet that demand and provide innovative features that not only improve business efficiency, but also enhance our day-to-day lives as well." QIHAN Technology is definitely working to create an American footprint. Time will tell if we'll see such things as fleets of robots throughout your average building in America.

Sanbot's “AI + Innovative Chain Solution" energizes businesses

Background: QIHAN Sanbot Robotics was invited to the world’s largest-scale chain industry summit – China Chain Day 2017. China Chain Day is the most influent and biggest chain industry summit in the world and dedicated to creating global new type chain industry ecosystem. Through shared cases, communication, connective sources at the scene, the event drives China’s chain businesses go to the whole world.


Consumption updating: AI pushing China’s chain to the whole world


"Internet, digitalization, IT, platform, accessible diversity, extension of the border, business model" are the prescriptions to consumption upgrading from the titans in chain businesses. And for "how to reduce labor costs and increase foot traffics", “how to offer a better training for staff, job recruitment, interesting interaction, social contact" and other, artificial intelligence is the hot topic.


The costs are similarly equal for online E-commerce and physical stores. Channel-oriented is out of date and the stores are conducting transformation and consumption upgrading, to become customers’ experience area. Thus, AI is the blue ocean of next consumption upgrading. In recent years, intelligent service robotics, AI voice recognition, facial recognition and similar high technologies are subverting the channels of retail industry.


In AI area, voice and visual recognition take up the highest ratio and each of them is 60% and 12.5% of artificial intelligent market. As predicted, the total amount of Chinese AI market will reach RMB9.1 billion from RMB1.2 billion in 2015.


Under the background of enough material for youngsters born in 90’s and 00’s generation, retail industry will encounter another evolution by vital of high technologies in the future 10 years – retail will not only mean buying and selling, but include the shopping experience and other feelings, both for E-commerce and physical stores.


Sanbot’s “AI + Innovative Chain Solution” energizing businesses


With the “New Retail” rising, various models of artificial intelligence are happening. And in future, with the integration of online and offline and better experience, customers’ staying on online platform is the key to justice their competitiveness.


In the past few years, QIHAN Technology has been deploying AI application platform and created one whole solution system for businesses based on the innovation of intelligent hardware. And its first commercial robot Sanbot S1 debut to the markets in 2016. Presently, QIHAN Technology’s R & D on robotic voice recognition system is just one part.


Sanbot Cloud-brained humanoid robot intelligent promotional management platform is of capacity to combining online and offline, realizing all-channel operations and customers’ images. For example, the intelligent robot’s facial recognition helps with membership recognition and call members’ data for accurate promotion, cutting off the membership costs and improving businesses sales value effectively. The humanoid service robot can offer guidance service, interaction experience, ensuring customers to receive better services both online and offline.




In the near future, Sanbot will bring more innovative solution for consumption upgrading of retail chain businesses and various industries by vital of AI technologies.