On August 10, 2021, Xiaomi held a 2021 annual speech and conference themed "My Dream, My Choice", as the "egg" announced the bionic quadrupedal robot CyberDog engineering exploration version, completely the whole new conference to the climax.
Compared to CyberDog's international English name, Xiaomi's internal Chinese name for it is also a very grounded "Iron Egg", Xiaomi engineers said the reason for this name is that they hope that this project is a good "feed", and will be able to
The first time I've seen this, I've seen a lot of it.
Domestic affordable bionic robots
Since Boston Dynamics created the quadrupedal robot Big Dog in 2005, a number of domestic and foreign companies have developed related products, and the millet CyberDog bionic quadrupedal robot, which was inspired by the Boston Dynamics Spot launched.
On August 17, the official YouTuBe platform of Boston Dynamics released a demo video called Atlas | Partnersin Parkour, which demonstrated Atlas's parkour ability close to humans, parkour track mainly consists of half-slopes, balance beams, and the corresponding wooden box obstacles, while The Atlas is able to jog, jump, turn, and backflip its way through the 90s of the video.
Parkour is the automotive equivalent of racing for humanoid robots, and it requires a high level of performance to be able to move in this environment. The extreme environment allows for effective testing of performance limits, which can lead to improvements in existing parts and technologies.
The biggest change to the Atlas humanoid robot shown in this video, compared to past videos of a single movement such as a backflip, is that Atlas is now perception-driven in the way it executes its movements.
Where past humanoid robots could only perform pre-programmed parkour on flat surfaces or stationary boxes, Atlas is equipped with an RGB camera and a depth sensor, and with template behaviors created by the team on Atlas, Atlas can automatically detect detection environments and react to them automatically.
But overall, the completion of this parkour test can be called another big step forward for humanoid robots. In a way, it's also a sign that Boston Dynamics, controlled by Hyundai Motor Group, hasn't given up on being "the robotics company of the future.
In contrast, CyberDog is a DEMO product, but it has a built-in NVIDIA Jetson Xavier NX edge AI chip, the world's smallest AI supercomputer, and Xiaomi's own high-performance servo motors , which are both powerful and powerful, making it easy to do things that might seem like the future of robotics. TA can easily accomplish some cool-looking action displays.
Compared to the Boston Dynamics series of robots, which cost tens of thousands of dollars, the CyberDog, which is already very complete, is priced at $9,999, which is not only not too expensive, but even a loss.
Chinese companies are actually showing signs of a price war on a product that is still figuring out what it can do and what it can be used for. ...... I don't know how Boston Dynamics feels about this.
Dangerous search and rescue, medical rescue, and family companion scenarios are all areas where CyberDog can expand in the future, but the Xiaomi development team needs to explore more application scenarios to provide more convenient services for human beings.
AI, is the root of all things intelligent
At present, the robotics industry has actually matured in terms of hardware, and the reason why Xiaomi's CyberDog quadrupedal bionic robot is able to operate in a variety of shows, the key lies in the AI algorithms are further, broader, and deeper fusion into the robot system.
Behind each of the robot's movements is an algorithm, such as walking, jumping, and so on, to combine the various algorithms and software, which in turn coordinates the operation of the bipedal degrees of freedom.
In the beginning, let the machine learn basic these basic actions, whether through human or machine evaluation mechanisms, such as reinforcement learning, so that the robot can be a little more flexible in each action, and then find the least energy-consuming strength and posture, and then let the TA to recognize the needs of different scenarios, to tune their respective algorithms, and realize the machine through the Artificial Intelligence technology. "self-learning".
In the future, it will no longer just rely on a newly developed set of algorithms to teach robots new actions, but to enable robots to do their own encounter with new environments, they will develop new actions that correspond to the needs of the environment, and this kind of leap forward in development will bring a very big change in the transformation of robots.
Huge demand for AI talent
The intelligence market is developing faster and faster, and Boston Dynamics' robot Atlas can already do parkour, which shows that robots are becoming more and more anthropomorphic and able to do more and more, and are already developing in the direction of cognitive intelligence.
With the continuous development of science and technology, artificial intelligence has gradually entered our lives, whether it is cloud computing or big data, or related technologies, the ultimate development of the appeal is to go to artificial intelligence.
Artificial intelligence is an important part of many technologies to realize their value, but also an important area of the world of science and technology, any platform, algorithms, tools can not run on their own, in the final analysis, the biggest challenge facing us is the shortage of talent.
From the Boston Dynamics R & D robot, to the 2021 Spring Festival Gala "machine cattle" group show, and now millet CyberDog quadruped bionic robot, in fact, bionic robots are not far away from us , but really want to manufacture it in large quantities, let it appear! In our lives, it will take some time.
I believe that one day, robots will be able to enter the homes of ordinary people at affordable prices, and make more contributions to the human society.