As a toy product, how to make the machine show enough "affinity" from the appearance design is the biggest difficulty. "If it's too mechanical, it scares the kids. But we've done tests and the first thing kids do when they see our ponies is they want to get on them." "The product design director of Penghang Intelligence told YiMagazine of China Business News.
Smart robots can be priced directly into the "high-end toy" market, but the downside is that they are not just needed. Fortunately, the biggest appeal of robot toys is that they can be upgraded online to become smarter and do more things, leaving a lot to be desired in terms of functional iteration.
The future evolution of this horse will be a very interesting part to watch.
Intelligent electric car to robot endorsement
"If smart cars are the crown of intelligent manufacturing, smart robots will be the crown of machine intelligence. In the long run, a bigger market requires a bigger investment." "He xiaopeng wrote on Weibo on Aug. 21.
In December last year, information about Penghang Intelligence could be found on tianyecha and other business information platforms. He Xiaopeng, who holds 65.1 percent of the shares, is chairman of the company.
In the early days of Xiaopeng Automobile, according to members of the founding team, He xiaopeng has been looking for a technical team in the field of robotics in China. Xiaopeng has also invested in hutian, a flying car company, and launched the Voyager X2, the first intelligent two-person manned aircraft, in July.
After investing in Penghang Intelligent, He Xiaopeng has also been deeply involved in business development, attending at least one offline meeting of the company every week, and promoting the preliminary research and development of Penghang Intelligent online at any time, even the details of product definition. "He Xiaopeng himself is a product manager. Facing the robot product, he will not just be an investor, but will definitely be deeply involved." "Said a founding team member of Penghang Intelligence.
Now, Xiaopeng Huitian and Penghang Intelligent are both ecological enterprises under the strategy of "Future transportation Explorer" of Xiaopeng Automobile. Ecological means not only long-term market interaction, but also practical cooperation at present. For example, part of the R&D teams of Penghang Intelligent and Xiaopeng Automobile have been connected with each other.
In the past, similar quadruped and bipedal robot companies didn't even have the concept of a mass production line; they were more like university LABS. Boston Dynamics is one of them. In addition to capital and r&d strength, one of the most important support that auto companies like Xiaopeng provide to developing robot products is their experience in mass production and industrialization.
With the background of Xiaopeng Automobile, Penghang Intelligent focuses on the commercialization strategy from the very beginning. "It's a collision and a combination of university LABS, car companies and Internet companies." "The founding team member of Penghang intelligence told YiMagazine.
Inflection points and challenges of robotics
The deep convergence between robotics development and self-driving technology companies stems from the logical similarity of many of their technologies -- all powered by batteries, powered by motors, and software based on ARTIFICIAL intelligence. That explains why, around the same time, smart car entrepreneurs are jumping into robotics.
The technical bottlenecks that have hampered the commercial use of robots, such as battery "range anxiety," voice interaction and visual recognition, are similar to many of those that afflict smart electric vehicles. The mass production process of smart electric vehicles is driving the development of these key technologies, and thus robotic products, to an inflection point from the laboratory to the factory and the market.
Of course, it's not that easy to get past this inflection point. One clear goal of autonomous driving is robotaxi, with different levels of technical goals in between. The long-term goal of intelligent robots is to replace any boring, dangerous, uncreative repetitive tasks (and this is the ultimate goal of Tesla's humanoid robots), but the technical path to that goal is still vague and has many technical hurdles to overcome.
In the simplest case, a robot would have to deal with a much more complex environment than a road, possibly recognizing dozens of times more types of objects than a car and dealing with more dimensions of information.
On the "body" level, robots are also much more complex than electric cars -- cars only need to drive tires, steering wheels can only turn left and right, and usually only have one or two motors. There may be a dozen electric motors on an intelligent robot. For every additional degree of freedom, you need a motor. The so-called "DOF" (Degree of Freedom) refers to the number of joints that the robot can move independently. The human wrist, for example, has three degrees of freedom: up and down, left and right, and rotation. In general, the more degrees of freedom, the more flexible the robot is and the more things it can do. This also means that the combination of hardware and software for robots is much more difficult than autonomous driving.
Therefore, judging from the information released by penghang intelligent machine Ma, a lot of investment is still needed to truly realize the valuable interaction with human beings, or even replace human work.
At present, Penghang Intelligent has laboratories in Guangzhou, Beijing and Silicon Valley, and its immediate goal is to recruit top talents as much as possible. Robotics research was originally a not-so-hot niche. Over the past year, more money has been pouring into robotics, and the competition for talent has intensified, much like it did a few years ago, before self-driving technology became hot.
Do you still remember he Xiaopeng's microblog? "A bigger market requires a bigger investment." Penghang intelligent machine horse is not the standard answer of robot commercialization, xiaopeng is not necessarily the absolute leader of robot industry, but the rapid evolution of intelligent robot industry is inevitable.
At present, both industrial robots and medical robots have clear functions and corresponding commercial scenarios, while biped and quadruped robots have not yet come up with a proven commercial path. Even some of the world's most technologically advanced companies in this field, such as Boston Dynamics, have been sold off repeatedly because their long-term commercialisation prospects are uncertain.
Therefore, toys or children's company is the easiest scene for biped or quadruped robots to dock with.
But the challenge is that for Penghang and its peers, there is no precedent for what their products should be sold for, to whom or to provide value.
Penghang intelligent machine horse is targeted at families with children. In terms of design style, the robot horse is similar to Honda's humanoid robot Asimo and SONY's robot dog Aibo, both examples of companion robots. The product team of Penghang intelligence believes that the emotional communication value of robots in the future will be as important as the value of replacing human beings with robots.
With all the technological connections, are robots the next big smart hardware business after self-driving cars?
Mr He is the third entrepreneur in the past month to announce plans to build a robot, following Mr Lei and Mr Musk. This is not a coincidence. Their companies are making smart electric cars.
On September 7, the startup company "Penghang Intelligent", chaired by He Xiaopeng, officially debuted and released its first product -- penghang Intelligent machine Horse.
It is a four-legged robot, shaped like a pony and about one meter tall, which is said to be able to be ridden by children aged 3-6. Officially described as "Xiaopeng You's first intelligent vehicle", it can realize intelligent experiences including recognizing and following objects, adapting to walking on multiple terrains, automatically avoiding obstacles and interacting with people by voice.
Close to toy positioning, does not mean he xiaopeng invested in the robot development company just for fun. It is reported that this is the third generation of the "robot Horse" prototype. The "Penghang Smart" project was established in 2016. Since then, it has accepted personal investment from He Xiaopeng and become one of xiaopeng Auto's ecological enterprises.
The potential behind 'toys'
Robotics is a broad concept, a collection of very different products. At present, commercial products can be roughly divided into commercial and civilian types. The former appears in the production line of the factory or the operating table of the hospital, while the latter is to accompany, reception as the main function.
Technically, penghang's robotic horse and Boston Dynamics' robotic dog are known in the industry as quadruped robots, while Tesla's Tesla Bot is known as biped robots.
The core technology of bipedal and quadruped robots can be roughly divided into two parts: intelligent systems and motion control, that is, mind and body.
Brain, refers to the robot to be like a human, can communicate with people, learning, that is, people's conventional understanding of artificial intelligence; The body part should be able to perform all kinds of simple to complex movements like humans and other creatures. Atlas, a bipedal robot developed by Boston Dynamics, is the technology leader in the latter part.
Manly Battery which located in Shenzhen,China. A leading battery manufacturer mainly
offering rechargeable Lithium batteries,any query pls feel free to contact info@manlybatteries.com.
