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.

NetPosa and QIHAN Technology aim to lead intelligence industry

The Vice President Gao Jun of the listed company, NetPosa, (stock code 300367), led his team to visit QIHAN Technology. QIHAN president Lin Lude and technical director Zhuang Yongjun discussed and Gao had a close communication about the commercial applications and technological potentials of Sanbot robot.

NetPosa is a domestic leading video surveillance products and solutions provider and has been moving towards AI transformation during the past two years. When receiving the media interviews, NetPosa leaders stated many times that AI is going to be the main trend in security in at least 10 years, and that NetPosa wants to be the leader in this field. With this vision in hand, Vice President Gao Jun led his team to the Chinese famous robot R&D enterprise QIHAN Technology, to discuss cooperation between these two companies, leading to ways to innovate the market and the world.  

Zhuang Yongjun discussed with Mr. Gao Jun about the research between the two companies and the research and development of the Sanbot brand and the robot series. The Sanbot brand was launched in 2014, and till now, QIHAN launched Sanbot Elf commercial service robot, Sanbot Nano home robot, and Sanbot King Kong intelligent robot for hospitality enterprises specially. QIHAN now owned over 200 unique patents covering machine vision recognition, multi-axis control, and big data analysis, etc.

However, Zhuang stressed that QIHAN Technology will not only pay attention to innovative technologies but also the applications of these technologies. Not only the interactive experience and visual intelligence, Sanbot King Kong is also capable of carrying cargo up to 75Kg, free movements in complex environments, autonomous mapping, a top moving speed of 5 meters per second, and carry two screen (one on each side), printers, trays, and other third-party devices, expanding its functionality. All of these functions are crucial in making this humanoid service robot lead the industry and be applicable to governments, businesses, and many more industries.

Lin Lude introduced the advantages of Sanbot robot platform and its attributes of QIHAN Technology’s “Robot + Various Industries” strategy to Gao Jun. Lin states that technology must be combined with application scenarios to create business value. To that end, the development of these robots has opened these standards to the world. Open API and open SDK, allows the robot to integrate software and programs to fit into many businesses. This strategy has seen a rapid increase in the expansion of the application scene of Sanbot. In the past two years, QIHAN has pushed forward the open API robot into many scenarios, including the beauty industry, retail, catering, medical, banking, customs, courts, and more.  

In the end, Gao Jun said the technology research and development of QIHAN is very impressive and a prospect is expected. The two sides discussed how to cooperate with each other, discussing business models, development prospects and more. QIHAN Technology has reached a concession that the two sides will work together to develop AI robots, and jointly promote the development of hi-tech/AI industries.

Robot is one key factor of the world's intellectualization

A report in Nikkei Asian Review said about 90 percent of the personal robots on display at the IFA consumer electronics trade show, which was held in Berlin earlier this month, were developed and manufactured by Chinese companies.

Sensing the surging demand for such products and systems in industries like healthcare, education and entertainment, China is targeting intelligent service robots worth more than 30 billion yuan by 2020.

Qu Daokui, president of Shenyang-based Siasun Robot & Automation Co, said, "Chinese robot makers must go global. The industry is so globalized and changing so fast that no one knows what a robot will look like in five to seven years. If we only stick our eyes to the home turf, we will die out," Qu said.

According to the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology, China is now on a par with foreign countries in voice- and image-recognition technologies, which are key to making advanced AI robots.

Also, about 50 percent of domestic robots are equipped with homegrown servomotors, a key element of sophisticated automated machines. This ability overcomes certain technological bottlenecks that have been impeding the industry's development for a while.

Wang Tianmiao, president of the Smart Manufacturing Research Institute at Beihang University, said technological progress is helping accelerate the global expansion of Chinese robot makers. "But greater international cooperation on R&D is needed to crack the high-end overseas market," Wang said.

Mounting enthusiasm for broader international cooperation was in evidence at the 2017 World Robot Conference in Beijing in August.

Vice-Premier Liu Yandong said at the event's opening ceremony, "We will step up efforts to foster closer cooperation with other countries, focusing on robotics R&D, training, and how to better integrate artificial intelligence technologies into innovative AI robotics."

expert: China is to lead the world in several fields of robotics

To be at the forefront of the next technological revolution, China is committed to cooperate with more countries and will be able to lead the world in several fields of robotics in the next five to ten years, said Toshio Fukuda, a member of the Science Council of Japan.

"China is a gold mine for innovation and technologies and has large markets for innovative AI robotics," he said. "With the supportive policies, abundant resources provided by both the government and the companies and more forms of cooperation, China will catch up within a few years and then overtake other developed countries to take the top spot in many fields of robotics."

He said during the World Robot Conference in Beijing last month that China is now at a new phase with the ability to produce its original robots, and will be able to lead the world in manufacturing robots and making intelligent service robots in the future.

"Particularly in China, there will be a huge market for services robots that assist people in improving the living conditions, such as the cleaning robots, care robots for the elderly and kids and the data logging robots for healthcare.

"After decades of economic boom and development, Chinese people now are sufficiently affluent to be able to afford a better quality of life. And I believe that in the near future, those service robots would be able to cater to people's specific needs and bring much more value than we thought today."

In 2015, China introduced the Made in China 2025 strategy, a 10-year national plan to transform the country into a world-class high-tech manufacturing power. The plan aims to move manufacturing up on the value chain, developing several key sectors, including robotics.

With the rapid development in robotics in recent years, China is becoming an increasingly important market for advanced AI robots.

The International Federation of Robotics estimates that China's shipments of robots rose 27 percent to around 90,000 units in 2016, almost a third of the global total. And the number is expected to almost double to 160,000 in 2019.

Fukuda said Japan and China should cooperate together in developing and producing the necessary robots for consumers. Chinese robot companies should grasp the opportunity, he said.

"The competition in artificial intelligent robotics will be very fierce. Instead of being locked in a competitive environment in first-tier cities like Beijing and Shanghai, companies should find new niche markets and even target small towns," he said.

Healthcare robot to be a potential market around the world

With the increasing global aging and rising medical demand, the development of assistant robots is taking the fast lane. In fact, the market expectations of entire service robot industry in recent years are constantly good. The global market size is expected to reach 82 billion US dollars by 2021.

Doug Moore, the senior manager of human assistant technical department of Toyota, which released Human Support Robot, pointed out that, Toyota is trying to diversify the lives of people with disabilities by increasing their mobility, including the development of technical solutions to assist the limited action. The research and development of HSR and the tests of Romy are the company's business development areas to help people with disabilities control their own lives. Except for Toyata, Teijin Japan and Panasonic also start the research and development of robotics in healthcare.

Similar to the situation in Japan, China is also facing increasing social problems such as increased aging and the increasing proportion of people with disabilities. As can be expected, with time going, in the future we need to invest a lot of manpower and material resources to care for the elderly and the disabled, and this will become an important burden of our country. If we can provide a number of care robots for the elderly dedicated to nursing work, this will not only improve the quality of their lives, but also ease the current national and social pressures.

As a result, the huge market outlook is driving the rapid growth of sales of home robots such as assistant robots. Recently, the industry research institutions analysis International released the report shows that in 2016 China's service robot market reached 7.29 billion yuan, a substantial increase of 44.6% year on year. In addition, analysis International predicts that the next three years, China's service robot market will continue to grow, the size of 2019 is expected to close to 15.2 billion. In the whole world, the compound annual growth rate of intelligent service robots for the next five years (2017-2021) is about 16.19 percent, and the global service robot market will reach $ 82 billion by 2021.

The booming market is expected to show that the development of robots, especially home-assisted personal use, is very promising. Therefore, with the global aging further intensified, escort, education, medical and other needs of the rising, the service robot will continue to maintain rapid development, to promote social changes in various fields.

The current and future situation of intelligent service robot

The data mining and analysis iiMedia Research released "2016 China Robot Industry Research Report" shows that the sales of service robots will reach 34.9 million units by 2018. And, Chinese government released the robot industry development plan (2016 - 2020), manifesting the robot industry will be officially promoted to national strategy.

At present, economic and technological development and social civilization are the background of the birth of the artificial intelligent robots. When the industrialization level has been improving rapidly, the scientific and technological development has been accelerating and the value of the labor force has been continuously improving. Thus, human being’s repetitive workload need to be overtaken urgently.

In recent years, the application of robots has gradually shifted from the industrial field to the fields of cleaning, education, patients and elderly health care and home service. The innovative AI robotics has developed rapidly. The development of service robot is expected to provide new economic growth and driving force for the development of the national economy.

China's population over 60 years has exceeded 10% of the total population, the aging population will become China's unprecedented challenges. In addition, the proportion of the disabled in China is among the highest in the world. In the near future, care for the elderly and the disabled will be an important burden for society, requiring a lot of robotics in healthcare to provide services to help care for the daily life of the elderly and the disabled. All these are to improve their quality of life, thereby reducing the overall number of social workers and the quality of the demand.

Education requirement for intelligent educational robots will form a huge market. At president and during the promotion of quality education, general education, research university model, the promotion of educational robot courses, hands-on assembly and programming practice can expand the young people's logical thinking ability, this entertaining plus education new model has become an effective means and tools for hi-tech education.

At the same time, China's overall objective situation is demanding pre-school education more and more. With the vigorous development of the domestic pre-school market, pre-school education and entertainment robot for 3-6 year-old children will also have a huge market space.

In the future, intelligent service robots are expected to offer a large quantity of services in the fields of education, catering, shopping guide and so on with the continuous improvement of voice interaction and semantic understanding technology, etc. When the hi-tech giants are deploying and the new players continue to emerge the intelligent service robot industry, only the enterprises with ongoing technology upgrades and product updates service robot in order to stand out in the industry history.

Sanbot robot series received lots of attention during National Mass Innovation & Entrepreneurship Week and Shenzhen Maker Week

The Shenzhen branch of exhibitions during National Mass Innovation & Entrepreneurship Week and Shenzhen Maker Week was held during Sep 15~21st. The theme “Make with Shenzhen,” Shenzhen Maker Week was about the entrepreneurial experience, dock maker’s project, and entrepreneur enthusiasm by makers’ achievement exhibition, interactive shows entrepreneur competitions, and more.

Sanbot intelligent robot went on stage for the open ceremony to kick off the event with Shenzhen Vice Mayor, Ai Xuefeng, and the Director of Technological Innovation Committee, Liang Yongsheng.

New Technologies gaining the much attention from people

The intelligent service robot called Sanbot King Kong (developed by QIHAN) is very high-tech. The advanced humanoid robot is capable of 5m/s walking speed complex room environments, three times faster than a human’s walking speed. It can carry up to 75kg cargo and adjust its center of gravity on its own. Once Sanbot was on stage, Sanbot King Kong waved its arms and hands to say hello to the guests and everyone applauded.

At the opening ceremony, QIHAN’s other intelligent robot model -- Sanbot Elf helped with the ceremony as well. A total amount of 11 sets of Sanbot Elf advanced AI robots danced on stage to liven up the event.

During the Shenzhen Maker Week, organizers held a series of exhibitions and events for the week, gathering together the worldwide leaders in UAV, intelligent robots, AR/VR, genetic sequencing, unmanned vessel, new energy automobile, Internet applications, wearable devices and more of makers’ achievements.

Build the open and innovative eco-system

This was the third year Shenzhen held the Maker Week event. Liang Yongsheng expressed that Shenzhen Maker Week fully exerted the advantages of Shenzhen international makers’ sources, examining the domestic and international makers’ activity and creativity, and the achievements into various industries.

Sanbot intelligent robot is the perfect innovation case -- based on the concept of “technology integrated with application scenario for commercial value”. QIHAN Technology opens standards, API, and SDK to all the integrators and solution developers since the first Sanbot robot was launched. So, global developers can develop solutions to benefit from the robot according to their scenarios. The prospect strategy drives the service innovation and commercial innovation based on robot carriers.

Through the developer eco-system with smart AI, QIHAN Technology is the company that practices “Robot + Various Industries.”And, Sanbot robot, as the carrier of hi-tech, is the proof of the innovation eco-system the Chinese government has called for. QIHAN Technology will keep traveling on the innovation path.