Sanbot open API enables developers to create various robotic solutions

The artificial intelligence robotics is booming, with more and more companies vying for market share. For the most part, though, these companies have all been from US or Europe. But things are always changing: now a Chinese manufacturer has come up with a robotic product that claims to offer open API, allowing developers to customize it.

Asmag: Could you briefly introduce your product? 

QIHAN Technology: Sanbot, powered by QIHAN Technology Co. Ltd.,is an intelligent Cloud-brained humanoid robot, one three-in-one ecosystem, which consist of Sanbot robot, Qihan Cloud service platform and Q-link mobile App. Sanbot is equipped with different types of sensitive sensors and reliable hardware such as 3D HD camera, 1080p display screen and 720p laser HD projector, etc.Integrating IBM Watson AI system, the robot is capable of human detection, facial recognition, automatic recharging, obstacle avoidance, voice recognition, localization and free interactionwith near 30 languages.

One of its most advantages is that Sanbot offers open API, which allows developers to customize and program various applications in retail, hospitality, security, healthcare and education industry. Till now, Sanbot robots have been successfully used at the scenarios like China Customs, Shenzhen and Guangzhou International Airport, Audi Launch event, with praises andpositive feedbacks from user.

What makes your product special? Why?

1.Powerful team: We now have more 800 working staff including over350 senior engineers with numerous-year research experience.They have published near 1000 hi-level theses and gained around 100 domestic and international patents.

2.Reliable hardware and software: Sanbot humanoid service robots adopt world-class hardware and software from Harman/Kardon, Foxconn, Panasonic, Sony, IBM Watson Baidu and iFlytek, etc.

3.Open-API: We offer openAPI and SDK for developers and integrators, which means that Sanbot can be programmed and customized according to the scenarios where they’d like the robot to work.

4.Mass-production capacity and competitive price: With full automatic production lines, Qihan manufacturing Center has the production capacity of 1,500 sets per day. We offer quitecompetitive prices for our partners including AI carrier distributors, robotic solution developers and integrators and we are now recruiting more partners like these. But we can’t say a definite price as their application areas, order quantities and customized requests.

5.Applications cases: Sanbot service robots have been approved and used in Gongbei Customs for customs inspection and Tax all. The advanced AI robots offer customized services in Guangzhou-Baiyun international airport and Shenzhen-Baoan International airport. Now Sanbot customized retail service robot support cashier assistance, membership processing, electronic coupons dispensing and write-offs, etc.

What are the factors that you expect will drive demand for your product? Why?

Each partner or user wants their purchasing product to be functional,reliable and with cost performance ratio. Sanbot open API robot meets all these requests. With open API, Sanbot can bring massive commercial value for all the agents, robot solution developers and integrators.

The design of the robot appears rather conventional, although one has to say the company could have worked on the face a bit more. As far as systems integrators are concerned, QIHAN Technology pointed out that the openness and IoT characteristics should assist them when integrating with other devices.

Fall into a lawsuit? Sanbot legal service robot helps

It takes the jobs of lawyers to answer over 50,000 special questions, plays the role of lawsuit guide in the court to train litigants to know of the initiating processes and helps mediate disputes between neighbors and family members… In April, the customized intelligent legal service robot was developed successfully in China Software Valley in Nanjing City and began to offer service. It seemed there was wide gap between law and big data and artificial intelligence, but the cross-border team-up brought the intelligent service robot with “brain of law”.

 “Hello, what can I do for you?” When the reporter of Nanjing Daily was talking with a working staff, a cute intelligent humanoid robot came over and greeted them. That was an intelligent robot developed by QIHAN Technology and “brain of law” given by Nanjing University and some other universities.

Inquisitor: What should I do if my boss owes me salary?

Sanbot Legal service robot: Does the opponent accept the owed amount? One, he or she accepts; Two, he or she is controversial…” Faced with numerous questions of labor dispute and feneration from inquisitor, Xiaofa (name of the legal service robot) responded with details and listed the laws and regulations, judicial point of view and related cases on the screen. At last, according to the claims from inquisitor, Xiaofa provided QR code for inquisitor to download the big data report, which predicted the probable result of judgment, approval rating and reject rating, analyzed the probable factors leading to lawsuit failure and reminded the litigant of evidences, time cost and economic cost…

It is not strange that the robot can recognize and speak Chinese, and the important thing is that the advanced AI robot can recognize and speak near 30 foreign languages, and quote legal regulations, analyze cases and make reasoning and judgement. Du Xiangyang, the lawsuit solution developer told Nanjing Daily, “Xiaofa is capable of communication, facial recognition, voice command and source recognition, independent walking and the other basic functions, and the most advanced is the human-robot interactions in laws and regulations. The programmable humanoid robot can answer over 50,000 related questions, including civil law, criminal law, commercial law and other numerous areas.”

How does the robot learn and use the laws and regulations? It is the latest technology application achievement of legal big data. In the opinions of the administrator of the project Liang Yanyuan and other AI engineers, laws and regulations, accusations and the relevant legal terms are all codes. Via technologies such as algorithm, intelligent mapping, etc., robot can also imitate lawyers to question closely, imitate judge the logic and make the final conclusion.

“It was last year when the thought of lawsuit service robot came out.” Du Xiangyang told the media. “The judicial service professional personnel are lacking, the cost of lawsuit consultant is high and normal citizens know little about lawsuit processes, which are the pain points for legal services. An advanced intelligent robot, integrated with professional knowledge of laws and regulations is very helpful to the society.”

As far as we know, till now, over 80 Xiaofa Sanbot legal service robots has been serving in courts, justice bureaus and legal branches in Zhejiang, Guangdong and more provinces, to take the job of services including lawsuit guidance, lawsuit consultant. The robots can be for sales or renting. Du told Nanjing Daily in the end,“this was a society of ‘Robotics as a Service’, and in the future, any areas related to laws could adopt the intelligent legal service robot. The competitors are not too many and our robots are of first-rated hardware and software, therefore, we would have a prosperous future regarding this robot product.”

Sanbot robot is expected to contribute more to hospitality business

HITEC Toronto 2017, a three-day hospitality event, kicked off on Jun 26th at the Metro Toronto Convention Centre in Toronto, Canada. HITEC (or Hospitality Industry Technology) is part of HFTP and normally held in North America, Europe, and Asia. The HITEC this year attracted over 500 exhibitors in hospitality and relevant industries. Sanbot service robot was loved by international professional hoteliers and onlookers at the scene.

Sanbot, manufactured by QIHAN Technology, is a Cloud enabled open API intelligent robot with world-class hardware and software from Sony, Sharp, IBM Watson and more. The intelligent humanoid service robot is one three-in-one ecosystem integrating Hardware, Mobile App and Cloud service. And the open API enables developers to accessibly develop and install applications according to the scenarios wherever users would like the robot to work.

It was the first time Sanbot debut in Canada, and also the first time at such a professional hospitality event. At the booth, professional hoteliers and onlookers were surprised when heard of the basic introduction of the robot from Mr. Spencer Block. Spencer, the marketing manager of QIHAN Technology, is the planner and charger of Sanbot in HITEC event.

As well as the basic introduction, Spencer controlled Sanbot robot via voice command, touch screen and mobile App Q-Link, which attracted massive visitors to have interactions with the robot. He demonstrated Sanbot Store solution to the public, Sanbot Store help retail and hospitality business with product introduction, customer reception, promotional activity and entertainment and event big data record, improving their customer stickiness and business benefits effectively.

The wave Sanbot created at the event even brought the world well-known media, IT World Canada. Brian from the media held an interview with Spencer and Sanbot. “Sanbot robot can do more for home and businesses, such as preschool and school education, health care for the elderly and kids in family and also hospital, retail promotion and transaction, and the most important is hotel service. Sanbot has more potential abilities to be developed, you’ll meet very soon”, Spencer told to IT World Canada when was asked what Sanbot could do.

When talking about the prices, Spencer illustrated that QIHAN Technology had been recruiting agents, robotic software developers and professional integrators, and the prices are different, up to the requests, order quantities or customized services.

Prior to HITEC, Sanbot robot had been a new face in the hospitality market to many hoteliers. Sanbot left unforgettable impression in the North American hospitality industry. Hoteliers thought Sanbot could help them with their hotel staff training and businesses promotion. Sanbot even received the attention from the international hi-tech giant – Sumsung and some other industry professionals also considered Sanbot as one good solutions provider in remote conference, communication and the potential network solution, etc.

The exhibition was not the only event in Toronto Sanbot attended. Sanbot went to a robotics summer class at The University of Toronto to help students learn about automation, AI, and android platforms, all of which are part of Sanbot’s advanced technology. Students got to try out some of Sanbot’s demos and had great learning experience.

From exhibition halls to classrooms, Sanbot had a wonderful first trip to Toronto and hopes to return soon. 

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 service robot changes traditional banking services

Specially designed for robotic services in Bank of China, Sanbot robot’s excellent performance not only receives acclaims from the bank’s leaders, but also attracts a large number of customer onlookers, taking the limelight. In the bank lobby, she is capable of customer voice interaction, identification, and product & business interpretation - a set of full business processes in bank.

The head of Bank of China in Guangdong province introduced first intelligent robot, which was proposed by Shenzhen Ezhome Cloud Computing Co. Ltd. Ezhome steamed up with Sanbot intelligent robot to help bank with intelligent transformation with customized banking solution.

Banking business is in the dominant position in finance industry and plays a great supporting and promoting role in economic and social development. With massive private capitals going into banking business and the rise of Internet finance such as Alipay and Yu’E Bao, the core businesses of traditional banks suffers huge hits; meanwhile, the problems of long-time queueing-up, complexed operation processes, probable bad attitudes and some other problems cannot be solved fundamentally. The transformation of traditional banks is imperative.

EZhome mainly offers intelligent, high-efficient, secure one-stop sales Cloud service to help small and medium enterprises with their management ability and gain more businesses, with its advantages of Cloud computing, mobile interconnection, big data, social network and other technologies, integrating advanced company applications. Besides, EZhome also provides intelligent robotic solutions for banks, state owned enterprises and governmental agencies.

Fused with superior technologies of EZhome into Sanbot’s ecosystem with Hardware-App-Cloud service, Sanbot Service Robots push forwards banks’ intelligent development. The intelligent AI robots take the heavy responsibility of customer reception, business shunting, business inquire and processing and business guidance, demonstrating the new orientation of banking business development with artificial intelligent services.

As financial agencies, it is crucial to offer financial services and help with consumers with their property management and artificial intelligence is the greatest engine for the development of financial agencies. Their bank transfers and property management allows them to get services from intelligent humanoid robots, and especially the intelligent data processing can help financial agencies to handle their general customer services and inquires.

Applied to banking system, Sanbot advanced humanoid robots are able to provide numerous innovative services for financial industry. Artificial intelligent robotics helps to improve business handling efficiency greatly in banks and the intelligent human-robot interaction can fulfill the innovative customer experience sufficiently; Sanbot can also record customers’ behaviors and realize the intelligence of multiple sources by analyzing big data intelligently.

Advanced AI robots that are applied in banking industry, through network and intelligent devices, help banks with the optimized innovation of business processes, enhance the communication and interaction with customers and improve banking efficiency. The intelligent service robots will be the sally port of banking industry’s upgrading and transformation, strengthening the core competitiveness of traditional banks.

Bit hit: Softbank acquired Boston Dynamics

It’s breaking news to most of professionals and companies in artificial intelligence and robotics area that Softbank claimed to acquire Boston Dynamics and SCHAFT from Google’s parent company Alphabet Jun. 9th, which was considered as Softbank’s great acceleration in the development of new type of intelligent robot.

As far as I know, Softbank has been majoring in humanoid robot Pepper and Nao. The Chairman and CEO of Softbank, Masayoshi Son, orientated intelligent robot as the key area his company majors in. The stock of Softbank witnessed a 7% sharp growth, the highest point in the past 20 years after the acquisition was released.

Masayoshi Son announced artificial intelligent robot will be one of the key driving forces of next information revolution. Boston Dynamics is the leader of dynamic robot and he welcomed its joining-in, Softbank will continue to support the development of dynamic robot and explore to help people more convenient, more secure and more substantial applications.

The founder of Boston Dynamics Marc Raibert approved the values Softbank brought out by using technology to benefit people. Raibert hopes he could realize the mission of advanced AI robot together with Softbank, so that the robots would create greater values to in the more intelligent and interactive future world.

Sounds the acquisition positive? Not yet. Media have different opinions, and they describes the acquisition by using the words of “Boston Dynamics finds the buyer finally”, “a burden to Softbank”, “hot potato to Softbank” and “Boston Dynamics jumps into fiery pit” and more.

It’s open to AI industry that Google’s robot item “Replicent” has been continuously turbulent and going downside since the item’s charger Andy Rubin’s resignation. The developing strategy of Boston Dynamics was much different from that of Google’s department and Boston Dynamics’ failure to push the new service robots to the markets and some other closured resulted in robot item was not considered to long-term planning.

Some professionals also think that, Boston Dynamics majors in AI and robot and so does Softbank, but their robots and robotics technologies are different. The acquisition does not strengthen the robotics technologies and the difference may add extra burden to Softbank. Regarding the acquisition, it is still a question mark that who is right or wrong and time will be the best witness.

No worry about robots’ threat any more

In the past few years, numerous media reports that the era of intelligent service robots has arrived. In fact, as early as 25 years ago, Chinese scientist and future scientist Professor Zhou Haizhong predicted in the "Opinions on the Robot," with the progress of science and technology, especially the development of artificial intelligence and robot technology, the era of intelligent robot is coming, which will invigorate to the development of the manufacturing industry, and will provide new opportunities for the world economic development. Today, intelligent robots come out frequently and help with economic growth, verifying Professor Zhou's prediction.

In the 21^st century especially recent years, the tide of intelligent Service Robotics has been sweeping the world; various types of robots (including intelligent robot arms, intelligent humanoid robots, smart unmanned aerial vehicles, etc.) are paid attention to by the society. Because intelligent robots are of great use in the fields of manufacturing, construction, service, entertainment and medical, military, space and education, etc., experts even believe that their ownership and R & D level have become one of the standards of a national scientific and technological strength. Many developed countries, such as Japan, Germany, the United States and so on will consider the intelligent robots as a powerful promoter to their economic development. In recent couple years, Chinese intelligent robots are bursting out at a highest rapid.

However, the mixed feelings to the robots also come out among the people. Many people think that the birth of intelligent robots is a happy thing. For example, industrial robots can be flexible and efficient to improve production efficiency and product quality, and reduce production costs in many aspects; the robots can also set workers free from the monotonous physical labor, making them engage in more creative work; In addition, Intelligent robots can take on a lot of dangerous jobs, many occupational diseases, work injuries and therefore need, which cost a high price.

On the other side, ”Robotics as a Service”, the customized intelligent robot can help people with their hi-quality life: care robots for the elderly, robotics education in school, retail service robot, robot in the hotel; rescue robot in a variety of dangerous occasions to show their talents and complete the search and rescue mission. And even some people think that human and intelligent robots will join hand in hand for a better future.

But there are some people who worry that one day in the future, the smart robots may transcend human beings on the IQ, and even affect the employment, or even threaten human being’s life and property. As some science fiction films depict: intelligent robots take the positions of human in more and more areas, and stand on the opposite of human beings ultimately, from a helper into an enemy. Incidentally, American inventor and future scientist Dr. Ray kurzweil has predicted that robots would be smarter than humans in 2045.

In fact, the worry about robots’ threat is absolutely unnecessary. Intelligent robots are not omnipotent. In terms of IQ, the current smart robot "IQ" is equivalent to 4-year-old children's IQ, and compared to normal adult, its "common sense" is far worse. It can be seen, Dr. Ray kurzweil’s evaluation on the intelligent robot’s "IQ" is too high and his prediction is difficult to come true. Japanese robot expert Dr. Shigeo Hirose has said: Even if intelligent robots with "common sense", and can self-replication in the future, it is impossible to bring a wide range of unemployment, not even a threat to human beings.

Dr. Zhou Haizhong pointed out: the robots can go beyond the human beings in the work intensity, computing speed and memory function, but it’s impossible to transcend human in consciousness, reasoning, judgments and other aspects; In addition, the robot will be smarter and smarter to service human beings and benefit human beings with the principles of action.

Whether it’s a happy thing or worried one, the arrival of intelligent robots is the inevitable result of economic development and technological progress, but also an important symbol of a country to achieve modernization. The advantages of intelligent robots are much more than the disadvantages, thus we should embrace them with open arms.