Humanoid robots are the main carrier of artificial intelligence technology, allowing humans to experience advanced artificial intelligence technology more intuitively. Currently, new technologies and products represented by humanoid robots are flourishing, becoming a new highland for global technological competition, a new track for future industries, and a new engine for economic development. With the acceleration of commercialization, China's humanoid robot industry has enormous potential for future development.
01. Definition of humanoid robots
A humanoid robot is an intelligent robot with a body structure and movement mode similar to humans, such as bipedal walking and two handed cooperation. The integration of advanced technologies such as artificial intelligence, high-end manufacturing, and new materials into humanoid robots is expected to become a disruptive product after computers, smartphones, and new energy vehicles, profoundly transforming human production and lifestyle, and reshaping the global industrial development pattern.
Data source: Compiled by China Academy of Commerce Industry
02. Development policies for the humanoid robot industry
In recent years, China's policy support for the humanoid robot industry has been continuously increasing. In October 2023, the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology issued the "Guiding Opinions on the Innovation and Development of Humanoid Robots", planning to establish a preliminary innovation system for humanoid robots by 2025; By 2027, the innovation capability of humanoid robot technology will significantly improve, forming a safe and reliable industrial and supply chain system, building an internationally competitive industrial ecosystem, and achieving comprehensive strength at the world's advanced level. With the assistance of policies, the domestic humanoid robot industry will usher in a period of rapid development.
Data source: Compiled by China Academy of Commerce Industry
03. Development status of humanoid robot industry
1. Market size of humanoid robots
Humanoid robots are the culmination of information, manufacturing, materials, energy, life and other technologies, involving new fields and high technological content. Their innovative development contains enormous potential for productivity and is expected to drive the emergence of new economic growth points. With the dual support of policies and technology, humanoid robots have enormous application space in industries, healthcare, home services, and other fields. According to IFR and the China Electronics Society, although humanoid robots are in their early stages, they will experience explosive growth when compared to other electronic products with penetration rates exceeding 20%. From 2023 to 2030, based on a compound annual growth rate of 30%, it is expected that the market size of humanoid robots in China will reach approximately 870 billion yuan by 2030.
Data source: Compiled by China Commercial Industry Research Institute
2. The proportion of core component costs
The supply of core components for humanoid robots is an important support for the future large-scale development of the robotics industry. The three core components of humanoid robots include reducers, servo systems, and controllers, with a total cost accounting for over 70%. At present, high cost remains one of the important factors restricting the widespread application of humanoid robots.
Data source: Compiled by China Commercial Industry Research Institute
3. Investment and financing situation in the humanoid robot industry
At present, breakthrough progress has been made in artificial intelligence technology, providing an important driving force for the innovative development of humanoid robots. The world is ushering in a trend of integrating humanoid robots with general artificial intelligence. Domestic and foreign technology leaders, including Huawei, Xiaomi, Tencent, Samsung, and Tesla, are entering the humanoid robot race one after another. According to the latest data statistics, as of the end of November 2023, the number of investment events in China's intelligent robot industry reached 139, with an investment amount of 84.462 billion yuan. The investment areas include humanoid robots, intelligent bionic robots, intelligent robotic arms, intelligent collaborative robots, etc.
Data source: IT Orange, compiled by the China Business Industry Research Institute
4. Patent application status for humanoid robots
Humanoid robots are regarded as iconic products of the Fourth Industrial Revolution, and in recent years, technological innovation related to humanoid robots in China has continued to be active, with a cumulative number of technology patent applications ranking among the top in the world. Data shows that China has applied for a total of 6618 patents for humanoid robot technology, surpassing Japan's 6058 and South Korea's 1279, making it the country with the highest number of patents for humanoid robot technology.
Data source: Compiled by People's Daily Research Institute and China Business Industry Research Institute
Chinese enterprises and institutions have taken the lead in conducting a large number of forward-looking technological layouts, which will lay a solid technological foundation for China to embrace the new technology wave. From the number of valid technology patents held by the applicant, Ubisoft Technology has ranked first in the world in terms of effective patent reserves for humanoid robots, higher than companies such as Honda, Sony, and Toyota. In addition, the number of valid technology patents held by the ninth and tenth ranked companies, DaValve Technology, and Tsinghua University/Beijing Institute of Technology, are 186 and 110, respectively. Chinese companies have taken a place in the global humanoid robot industry.
Data source: Compiled by People's Daily Research Institute and China Business Industry Research Institute
5. Enterprises and products related to humanoid robots
In recent years, many domestic and foreign enterprises have actively laid out the humanoid robot industry and released related products, and the global humanoid robot industry is ushering in an important opportunity period. Among foreign companies, Tesla, Boston Power, Honda, Engineering Arts, 1X Technologies, and others have released humanoid robot products such as Optimus, Atlas, ASIMO, or their iterative products; Among domestic enterprises, Ubisoft, Data Robotics, Xiaomi, and Fourier Intelligence are gradually launching and updating their products.
Data source: Compiled by China Academy of Commerce Industry
04. Key enterprises in the humanoid robot industry
1. You must choose
Established in March 2012, Ubisoft Technology is a leader in humanoid robots and a leading enterprise in intelligent service robots. It is also one of the few companies in the world with full stack technology capabilities for humanoid robots, including industry-leading robotics technology (robot motion planning and control technology, servo drives), artificial intelligence technology (computer vision and voice interaction), robot and artificial intelligence integration technology (SLAM and autonomous technology, visual servo operation and human-computer interaction), and robot operating system application framework (ROSA). As of June 2023, Ubisoft has launched over 50 product categories and sold over 760000 robot products, covering more than 50 countries and regions worldwide, with over 900 corporate customers.
In terms of business operations, Ubisoft achieved revenue of 740 million yuan, 817 million yuan, 1.008 billion yuan, and 261 million yuan in the first six months of 2020, 2021, 2022, and 2023, respectively.
Data source: Compiled by China Commercial Industry Research Institute
2. Fourier Intelligence
Fourier Intelligence was founded in 2015 and is a general-purpose robot platform enterprise headquartered in Zhangjiang, Shanghai. It collaborates with the overseas headquarters in Singapore to build an international research and development, production, and sales service network. Since its establishment, Fourier Intelligence has been focusing on the underlying technology of general-purpose robots, continuously overcoming the bottleneck of core component (execution, perception) capabilities, and striving to provide a technology open platform for various industry scenarios with high-performance robot bodies, making robot technology truly universal and popularized.
In mid-2023, Fourier Intelligence officially released its first universal bipedal robot product, GR-1. This product has a smooth appearance, excellent mobility, and will lead the way in mass production and delivery. It has global breakthroughs in technology and commercialization, attracting widespread industry attention. At the same time, Fourier Intelligence has also achieved large-scale application of universal robot technology in medical rehabilitation scenarios. Through the "Intelligent Rehabilitation Port" product matrix, it has provided high-performance rehabilitation robots and comprehensive solutions to more than 2000 customers in over 40 countries and regions worldwide.
3. Valve
Data was founded in 2015 and is a leading unicorn enterprise in the field of intelligent robots. It is a leading global creator, manufacturer, and operator of cloud robots. Data has industry-leading cloud robot full stack technology solutions, innovatively proposing the "cloud robot" ("cloud brain+safety net+robot") architecture and successfully realizing the commercialization of cloud robots. In addition, Data has innovatively developed a robot intelligent flexible joint SCA that integrates communication, computing, and sensing, solving the limitations of robot hardware in standardization, integration, and industrialization, lowering the entry threshold for robots, and accelerating the formation of industrial ecology. As of December 2022, Data has obtained over 1600 patent applications, ranking first in the world in the field of cloud robotics.
4. Zhiyuan Robot
AGIBOT, founded in 2023, is an innovative enterprise dedicated to the integration and innovation of AI+robots, creating a world-class leading embodied intelligent robot product and application ecosystem. In August 2023, Zhiyuan Robotics launched its first embodied intelligent robot - Expedition A1. Expedition A1 integrates various advanced intelligent technologies such as ontology control, perception, cognition, and decision-making. Based on the cutting-edge big language models in the current AI field and its self-developed visual control model, it has carried out a series of innovations. In the coming years, Zhiyuan Robotics will focus on promoting humanoid robots to more fields, independently completing mobile and operational tasks in various complex scenarios.
5. Xiaomi Group
Xiaomi was founded in 2010 and listed on the main board of the Hong Kong Stock Exchange in 2018. It is a consumer electronics and intelligent manufacturing company with smartphones, smart hardware, and IoT platforms as its core. Xiaomi has been exploring humanoid robots since 2020 and has gradually built a robot research and development system with hundreds of people, entering the field of intelligent manufacturing into the humanoid robot race. In August 2022, Xiaomi successfully launched its first full-size humanoid bionic robot CyberOne (Tieda). The official claimed that the product has high emotional intelligence, can perceive human emotions, is visually sharp, can reconstruct the real world in three-dimensional virtual form, has a well-developed "cerebellum", can achieve bipedal movement posture balance, strong limbs, peak power torque of 300Nm, and other leading capabilities. This achievement marks Xiaomi's further improvement in the field of robotics.
From a business perspective, in the first three quarters of 2023, Xiaomi Group achieved a revenue of 197.726 billion yuan, a decrease of 7.6% compared to the same period in 2022; The net profit attributable to the parent company reached 12.748 billion yuan, a year-on-year increase.
Data source: Compiled by China Commercial Industry Research Institute
05. Development prospects of humanoid robot industry
1. Policy support for industry development
Humanoid robots are known as the "jewel on the crown of the robotics industry", which actually reflects the development status of automation and intelligence in a country, and also reflects the country's high-tech strength. The Ministry of Industry and Information Technology has issued the "Guiding Opinions on the Innovation and Development of Humanoid Robots", which proposes that humanoid robots integrate advanced technologies such as artificial intelligence, high-end manufacturing, and new materials, and are expected to become disruptive products after computers, smartphones, and new energy vehicles. In addition to central policies, in recent years, policies at the local level such as Beijing, Shanghai, and Shenzhen have also been frequently introduced, and humanoid robots are facing a period of rapid development under multiple catalysis
2. The release of large models accelerates industry development
ChatGPT has ignited a new wave of artificial intelligence fever, capable of handling multiple scenarios such as high emotional intelligence conversations, code generation, ideation of scripts, and novels, pushing human-computer dialogue to new heights. ChatGPT represents the latest progress in general artificial intelligence big models, demonstrating the influence of big models. A large model refers to a model with a large capacity that is used for deep learning tasks. It usually has a massive number of parameters and a complex architecture, with characteristics of emergence, scalability, and complexity. It has technical characteristics such as high computing power, big data, and large network structures, and has richer general knowledge and stronger learning and reasoning abilities. It can better reduce the cost of artificial intelligence applications, shorten the research and development cycle, and improve recognition accuracy. The development of general-purpose AI is expected to accelerate the progress of the humanoid robot industry.
3. Humanoid robots have broad application prospects
With the improvement of intelligence level and the decreasing cost and higher accuracy of corresponding mechanical equipment, material equipment, and other related instruments and equipment, robots will exhibit explosive growth in various industries in the future, and their application scenarios will also become more and more widespread. Humanoid robots are a multitasking, general-purpose robot platform that will have many application scenarios in industrial production, social services, and other fields in the future.
The above information is for reference only. If there are any omissions or deficiencies, please feel free to correct them!
