On August 11th, the Home Project × Seize the Future Industry Offline Salon (Phase II), co-sponsored by the EMBA Program of Fudan University, Zero Bay and The Paper Technology, was successfully held in Zero Bay, Minhang District, Shanghai, with the theme of "Robots, Next Stop". A number of robot industry representatives shared robot applications and cutting-edge technology trends, and discussed the next stop of robots with experts and scholars, discussing the development power of robots, the progress and shortcomings of the robot industry, the relationship between robots and people, the entrepreneurial suggestions of robot enterprises, and the sustainable survival system of science and technology enterprises.
The following is a transcript of the conversation, slightly deleted.
Home plans to seize the second phase of the future industry offline salon ×: robots, the next stop. All pictures in this article were taken by Du Jiayi.
Zhang Zhigang (General Manager of Shanghai Zero Bay Venture Capital Co., Ltd. and Chairman of Shanghai Qiming Future Industrial Technology Promotion Center): Today's theme is called "Robots, Next Station", which can also be called "Next Station, Robots". What's the robot's next stop? What is the relationship between robots and people? Please share your views with Professor Ling.
Ling Hong (Professor, School of Management, Fudan University and Director of the Smart City Research Center of Fudan University): In the development of robots, we can see two main directions: one is human intelligence based on big data, and the other is the field of robots that simulate human actions. These two directions used to develop separately, but will gradually merge in the future. Because human beings themselves are integrated with action and intelligence, robots and intelligent people based on big data will merge together to become the trend of the future.
The development of robots is the need of human beings, and human beings have been committed to using technology to reduce human burden and increase human capabilities, so the demand for robots is indispensable. In the application of robots, finding suitable application scenarios is an important foundation for development. This requires us to understand the nature of human needs, simply put, to replace what people are unwilling to do. Robots can only work when it comes to work that people are unwilling to do, otherwise they are just pseudo-requirements. There are many alternative needs in the industrial field, so the application scenarios of industrial robots are more extensive.
The application of robots also needs to be engineered, and engineering will create the emergence of robots with special capabilities. From the current product and application cases, the development trend of robots is anthropomorphic. Whether it is adaptive robots, humanoid robots, or intelligent humanoid robots, they are all working towards the integration with intelligent people. To achieve this integration, the emergence of new technologies is required, which is also one of the foundations of robot development.
There is no doubt that digital technology is an important foundation for the development of robots. Recent AI generalization capabilities show more of future development trends, and robots will also present multimodal perception and action. This requires innovation at the level of robot principles.
Therefore, the development of robots in the future requires more perception at the sensing level, and even needs to perceive various waves and rays that humans cannot currently perceive. This will enable robots to have human hands, feet, eyes, and especially the human brain, creating capabilities that humans do not have, and bringing benefits to humans.
Zhang Zhigang, General Manager of Shanghai Zero Bay Venture Capital Co., Ltd. and Chairman of Shanghai Qiming Future Industrial Technology Promotion Center.
Zhang Zhigang: The development of robot technology and the development of science and technology will inevitably change the relationship between man and machine. When a large number of humanoid robots appear in human society, will it compress human space, or will it make human life better? How does Mr. Hu view this issue?
Hu Xiaoping (Vice President of Shanghai Feixi Robot Technology Co., Ltd.): Today's young people are more willing to accept the relatively free working mode, and are not willing to engage in relatively boring and repetitive labor in the factory, so many manufacturing companies are facing the problem of labor shortage, and robots can solve such problems well. We are now studying the direction of force control of robots, in fact, we hope to replace human work in boring scenes and achieve automation. In addition, in industries such as rehabilitation, with the accelerated development of the aging population, the market demand will be increasing, if robots can do rehabilitation operations, it can help people maintain a better life experience and enjoy a better old age.
As robots become more intelligent and humanoid in the future, we hope to bring robots and people closer. Robots have been developing for sixty or seventy years, but it is generally felt that the distance between robots and people is still very far away. When it comes to robots, you may think of automation equipment in factories, of course, collaborative robots have appeared, such as coffee robots, but they are still very limited, and the safety of robots and the ability to adapt to open environments are problems that need to be solved. Therefore, we also hope to break through the problem of force control, put robots into an open environment to operate, interact with people, serve more groups, and improve the quality of life.
Hu Xiaoping, vice president of Shanghai Feixi Robot Technology Co., Ltd.
The development of robots can also lead to more creative sexual behavior. At present, the interaction ability between robots and humans is limited, and with the rapid development of large models, there will be many new applications and upgraded service experiences that we cannot predict at present. I think as long as we maintain an open learning attitude, humans and robots will be better integrated in the future.
Zhang Zhigang: Next, I would like to ask Mr. Wu, what aspects do you think China's robot industry needs to make breakthroughs at present? What problems, if solved, will make us work better with robots?
Wu Fei (Director of Elite Robotics Co., Ltd. and EMBA alumnus of Fudan University): I have been working in the robot industry for 10 years, and when my friends first knew that I was making robots, they would ask me when I could make a robot to watch children write homework, so that people could come home and eat a hot meal.
The development of the robot industry needs to integrate the advantages of the domestic manufacturing industry chain. China's manufacturing industry chain has good service, and the advantage is fast delivery; But the biggest disadvantage is the uneven quality of the product. In the first half of this year, domestic robot products showed very high growth for two reasons, one is that the domestic robot industry has made progress, and products have been recognized by more and more scenarios; Another reason may be that domestic products do provide the market with better cost performance and services, prompting the robot industry to grow against the trend. I think the core is to do a good job of yourself, iterate products, and do a good job in the three-piece set of soft power: operating system, algorithm library, and process package library.
Wu Fei, director of Elite Robotics Co., Ltd. and EMBA alumnus of Fudan University.
From the perspective of the greater application prospect of robots, robot ontology manufacturers must make their products more potential for application, and at the same time, there must be more support from upstream and downstream enterprises. For example, vision technology, sensor technology, software technology are further improved, integration and transformation needs, robots have greater application possibilities. In the long run, there will be more and more robot scenarios in the consumer market.
To give you an example, in 2018, I contacted a Beijing company and did a project that I thought was very meaningful, which was to implant brain electrodes in human head surgery. If the experiment is carried out by human hands, when the human hand implants the electrodes, the patient will shake, and the success rate is very poor, because people have no way to go in and see, and can only be imaged by professional equipment such as CT. But the robot can be accurately positioned, and the success rate is greatly improved.
Zhang Zhigang: Next, please talk about Jianzheng, what adjustments can be made in the future to make us go to the forefront of the world in the core technology field of robots and the system application of robots?
Zhang Jianzheng (founder of Shanghai Sazhi Intelligent Technology Co., Ltd.): I want to talk about it from four dimensions:
The first dimension, if we want to look at the future, we must understand history. When we start a business, the first thing we think about is what robots were doing in the past and what robots should be like in the future. In the fifties and sixties of the last century, industrial robots began to develop, and by the eighties and nineties of the last century, the development of robots in thirty or forty years only solved one problem: liberating people from complicated labor, when robots were just an automated machine. From the 90s to 2010, the global technological change, the vigorous development of information Internet technology, at this time robots also used these technologies, at this time robots and other equipment to establish contact, the robot from the complex relationship. After 2010, the chip manufacturing industry developed, computing power rose sharply, robots can process a large amount of data, at this time robots liberate people from vast data. After 2018 and 2019, AIGC was slowly developed, and we joked in the industry about "resurgence", at which time robots began to combine with AI. After 2020, the era of true intelligence arrives. At this time, we have just started a business, we think about the future robot, in addition to liberating people from complicated labor relations and data, the future robot must also be able to recognize, perceive, and make decisions like people.
In the second dimension, do robots really have to be like people? The concept of humanoid robots is very popular, but do we have to make robots human? Can humanoids achieve their goals? Our robot is not called a humanoid robot, we are called a humanoid robot, and we want the robot to achieve some functions of a person, but it does not have to look like a human. Robots are a new species of iron and silicon, while humans are carbon-based species, and the way robots are composed and human muscles, driving methods, and information transmission methods are different, so there is no need to make robots like people.
Zhang Jianzheng, founder of Shanghai Sazhi Intelligent Technology Co., Ltd.
The third dimension, from the perspective of industry, what does the industry need? More than ten years ago, everyone said that nearly 100 automobile factories have been built, is it reaching an inflection point, has the automobile reached the point of being in full swing, and gradually going downhill like the textile industry or other industries? When will robots also start to reach the top and go downhill? At that time, I put forward a point of view, robots are human demands, as long as human beings exist, they want to replace us with robots, this is the sun never sets industry, not the sunrise industry and the sunset industry, as long as we have demands, the robot industry is always moving forward.
The fourth dimension, now robots have such a big demand, in addition to the contradiction that people are not willing to enter the factory on the surface, it is also necessary to solve the current demands of productivity and production relations. In the past, subject to infrastructure, the car version was basically not changed for several years, and now it is basically changed once a year, relying on the organization of human original production lines has not solved the flexible production of small batches and multiple varieties, and can only rely on robots. Now this era has really come, in the future we want to order a car, we can place an order online, choose colors, interiors, factory robots can do flexible production. In terms of productivity and production relations, robots must replace a large number of traditional production models and enter all walks of life.
Home plans to seize the second phase of the future industry offline salon ×: robots, the next stop.
Zhang Zhigang: In the highly competitive robot industry, what unique path should companies take to make their development sustainable?
Wu Fei: Robots and people are cooperative relationships, because of the emergence of large models, people and machines will be easier to interact, people can send instructions to the machine, the machine has the possibility of making judgments with the help of large models, and there may be more and more such scenarios in the C end and factories in the future, robots and people adapt to coexistence, robots are equivalent to people's subordinates or assistants. For enterprises, we are just a drop in the ocean, and we must grasp the company's own soft and hard power, so that there may be greater possibilities in the future.
Hu Xiaoping: It is undeniable that the current development speed of artificial intelligence and robot technology will be much faster than the development speed from the fifties and sixties of the last century to the present. However, robots are not like artificial intelligence that can be quickly improved at a certain node, and robots still need to have a continuous accumulation process. Therefore, for industry players, it is necessary to have a certain patience and must maintain a learning mentality, which can never be changed, otherwise it is easy to fall behind. Although the robot is now a vent, it is always necessary to adhere to the precipitation technology and slowly polish it so that it can come to the moment of its outbreak.
Zhang Jianzheng: If robots are not intelligent, they will always be a tool for humans. If a robot is intelligent, what does its intelligence come from? Large model. What is the essence of a large model? The essence is "I for everyone, everyone for me". Everyone inputs data to the model, and the model outputs the results. If we feed it something that is in line with human values, it will not replace humans.
For us, we are still unswervingly doing the specific combination of humanoid work and industry and scene. We are constantly exploring what needs robots to replace people in the industry, and how to replace them with technology.
The Paper: The three robot companies here are all start-up technology companies, Professor Ling and Mr. Zhang have a lot of contact with science and technology enterprises, what key issues do you think should be paid attention to for start-up technology companies?
Ling Hong, Professor of School of Management, Fudan University and Director of the Smart City Research Center of Fudan University.
Ling Hong: Enterprises in the robot industry have the characteristics of scientific and technological enterprises, first of all, they need to have feelings, and secondly, they must have core technologies and be able to engineer technology. Enterprises also need to learn to find suitable application scenarios and design reasonable solutions and business models. As a science and technology innovation enterprise, its products and business models need to integrate multiple resources, have the idea of ecological development, and obtain the recognition of venture capital and society.
Zhang Zhigang: It is impossible to see the end of a technology company when it is first founded, and the most important thing in the development process of a company is how to build a sustainable survival system. Any product, technology, or field cannot actually be sustainable in the long term, but a company is sustainable. Enterprises can efficiently collaborate and adapt to the external environment, produce reasonable responses and contributions to the needs of the external environment, and finally obtain the returns generated by the contribution from the external environment, so that the system is sustainable. Sensitivity to changes in the external dynamic environment and adaptation are the most in-demand capabilities for start-up technology companies.
We've also seen a lot of tech entrepreneurs start with a very big idea, but can't take the first step or the first few steps. Enterprises need to build systems in the process of development, and at least ensure their survival when experiencing external uncertainty and large-scale fluctuations. On this basis, there is the ability to adapt to the external environment, constantly find new directions, take root in a certain field, and then have lofty ideals. Because any technology company, as long as it can survive, it itself contributes to society. As long as there is contribution, it is possible to make a huge, direct or indirect contribution to human society in the process of cooperation of large social systems. So the most accurate thing to say is, you have to be on the field.
The Paper: In your mind, what is the next stop of the robot?
Zhang Jianzheng: "The next stop of robots" I think there are two branches: one branch is based on the current technology, the development of humanoid robots, which is also a direction we are doing now. The other branch is the development of human-like forms of robots based on breakthroughs in new materials and underlying technologies.
Hu Xiaoping: Although robots have been developing for a long time, robots have always been very far away from people. With the development of technology, I am very much looking forward to the next stop of robots to truly enter people's lives, serve human beings, and exert more value and significance of it.
Wu Fei: The next stop for robots should be to become close partners with humans.