Tesla will display Optimus alongside two of its vehicles at the World Robot Congress in Beijing on August 22, 2024.
CNBC | Evelyn
BEIJING — Last week, a Chinese company showed off a human-like robot that could play the koto and pick up a soda. Tesla The Optimus humanoid was placed inside a transparent box and displayed motionless next to the car.
Elon Musk is Optimus can fold laundryand one day be able to cook, clean and educate children. The technology he touts could make Tesla worth $25 trillion. Musk said Tesla plans to test humanoid robots in its factories next year. It’s unclear at this point how well they’ll perform.
Meanwhile, the World Robot Congress, which began in Beijing on Wednesday, announced the debut of 27 humanoids, a record. Similar to China’s plunge into electric cars a few years ago, money and resources are now flowing into developing humanoid robots.
Total investment in China’s robotics industry over the past decade has exceeded 100 billion yuan ($14.01 billion), said Wei Cao, a partner at Ranch Ventures. He said his firm has about 15 billion to 20 billion yuan in assets under management.
Cao told CNBC that he expects the next milestone in humanoid robot development to come within the next year or two: a commercially viable use case in manufacturing, where a robot can move around and prioritize a series of tasks.
This is more sophisticated than repeating a single task, such as grabbing a water bottle, which the robot already does, Cao said. He said he is working with OpenAI and Alibabahas significantly improved the information processing capabilities of robots to carry out tasks.
Ranch Ventures has invested in Shanghai-based humanoid startup Agibbot, which was founded in February 2023. Former Huawei employeeA few days before the World Robot Congress, the startup unveiled five new robots, some of which can be pre-ordered for a deposit of 5,000 yuan.
Agibot will begin partial deliveries in mid-October, after which 300 robots will be available starting in November. Advertisements for the humanoid robots the company sells say they can perform roles such as salespeople, gallery guides and picking parts in factories. Some of these robots were on display at the conference.
Also in attendance was Stardust Intelligence’s humanoid robot, the Astobot S1, which was shown folding shirts in a promotional video in late April. Pouring the wineSome of the robots on display at the conference performed complex Chinese martial arts moves, played the koto and wrote calligraphy with Chinese brushes.
Shenzhen-based Stardust plans to open in December 2022 Tencent and Baidu Robotics projects. The startup says it is using artificial intelligence to help its robots learn to imitate, allowing machines to see the actions of others and replicate them.
Other humanoid robots from lesser known companies Galbot and TrueThey placed items in baskets and individually carried soda cans from the shelves to different tables.
Some of the actions were clunky and slow, it wasn’t always clear whether the actions were remotely controlled or performed autonomously, and the demo didn’t reveal all of the product’s capabilities.
Mr. Cao, from Ranchi, noted that there had been a significant increase in the number and variety of demonstrations at the World Robot Congress compared to last year, with many students and young people also taking part.
In his assessment, Tesla and other U.S. companies’ robotics technology is likely one to two years ahead of China’s, but Cao noted that China is more than 95% self-sufficient in its humanoid supply chain.
When asked why Tesla didn’t demonstrate Optimus at the conference, Kao said the promotional video already showed how powerful Optimus is, so he understood why Tesla didn’t want to invest the resources to hire engineers to operate the demo.
Tesla did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
Jeff Bernstein, president of the American Association for Advancing Automation (A3), spoke at the conference via recorded video and showed off several virtual demonstrations from humanoid startups such as Agility.
“These are demos, but like the others, they’re currently in the pilot program stage and we believe some companies have actually started using them beyond pilots,” he said, noting that the association is holding its own humanoid conference in Tennessee on October 7.
Specialization
Rather than trying to replicate an entire human at once, humanoid companies tend to focus on specific parts before moving on to others.
Based in Shenzhen Rimkus Dynamics unveiled a product this year called P1, a bipedal, balancing research robot that can climb stairs and regain its balance after being pushed.
Limx Dynamics was founded more than two years ago and, according to PitchBook, counts Alibaba among its recent backers. The startup announced earlier this month that its humanoid robots can move objects around warehouses and autonomously re-plan how to complete tasks. If the target moves.
Other companies at the World Robot Congress also showed off a variety of gears, robotic hands and other components.
Shigeki Kanno, president of the Robotics Society of Japan, said at a society forum on Thursday that by around 2030, a single robot will be able to perform simple household chores, nursing care and medical tasks, some on its own and some in collaboration with humans.
This includes the ability to express emotions, he says, and he doesn’t expect to see fully autonomous humanoid robots until 2050 or later.
As a development challenge, he said that for humanoid robots to fully support humans, the current problem of insufficient power needs to be resolved.
A humanoid’s battery may only last two hours before needing to be recharged.
