[Date: Recent]

China's homegrown AI-powered interface speeds up humanoid robot development

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An AI-powered interface developed by Chinese researchers is poised to accelerate the country’s humanoid robot research and development.

Dubbed "Humanoid Robot Big Factory", the interface can design a robot's hardware and software algorithms based on various requirements.

For a humanoid robot that can function outside, for example, the interface produces a robot design with the optimal hardware and software to complete outdoor tasks.

Researchers can manually adjust additional parameters like speed, stability and accuracy until the most ideal robot design is achieved.

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Chen Meng, senior engineer, Institute of Automation, Chinese Academy of Sciences:

"Our Big Factory uses artificial intelligence (AI), that is, letting AI help us humans design a robot we need. We humans only need to input the usage scenarios and required tasks based on our needs."

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Powered by AI, the entire design process to create an initial prototype can be completed within minutes.

Experts say the interface resulted in a tenfold decrease in robot R&D cycles.

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Qiao Hong, academician, Chinese Academy of Sciences/director, National Key Laboratory of Multimodal Artificial Intelligence Systems:

"Humanoid robots are very complex. The entire system has about 40 joints. With the big factory, we can speed up the iteration and improve the stability. For tasks which used to take maybe half a year, they can be done within half a month now."

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According to industry estimates, by 2030, the scale of the global humanoid robot market will top 260 billion U.S. dollars, with China's market contributing around 50 billion to the total.

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