Text | Industry Quadrant
Musk has added another fire to the humanoid robot.
On the 23rd, Musk said on the X platform that Tesla will produce a truly useful humanoid robot for internal use next year, and expects to mass-produce it in 2026 for use by other companies.
Since 2024, driven by concepts such as large models and embodied intelligence, humanoid robots have entered a highlight moment.
The fierce market atmosphere is like cooking oil on fire, and some new players have also appeared one after another.
According to incomplete statistics from the "Industry Quadrant", in the first half of 2024, a total of 22 financings in the field of global humanoid robots will be completed, with a total amount of more than 7 billion yuan. Among them, 13 financing cases have been completed in the field of Chinese humanoid robots, with a total financing amount of more than 2.5 billion yuan.
Source: Incomplete statistics of robot-related financing from January to July 2024, industry elephant restriction chart
But beyond that, a new role has emerged in the humanoid robot market – the Humanoid Robotics Innovation Center.
Since April this year, humanoid robot innovation centers have been established intensively in major provinces and cities.
On April 16, the Guangdong Provincial Embodied Intelligent Robot Innovation Center landed in Shenzhen; On April 18, Chengdu Humanoid Robot Innovation Center was officially opened; On the same day, Zhejiang Humanoid Robot Innovation Center landed in Ningbo; On July 19, Anhui Humanoid Robot Innovation Center also settled in Hefei.
It can be seen that with the innovation center as the traction, a large network around the humanoid robot industry in various provinces and cities has been slowly opened.
So, when the label of the city is put on the table, who will become the first city of humanoid robots?
Why Innovation Hub?
When it comes to the Humanoid Robot Innovation Center, most people should feel unfamiliar.
According to the document, the so-called innovation center [1] is actually a concept proposed by the National Development and Reform Commission in 2018, and according to the document, its goal is to serve key common technologies, cutting-edge leading technologies, modern engineering technologies, and disruptive technological innovations in strategic fields, promote the transformation of scientific and technological achievements, cultivate new industries, and cultivate new kinetic energy.
Therefore, the innovation center is not unique to the humanoid robot industry, and there have been such as integrated circuit innovation center, power battery innovation center, optoelectronics innovation center, etc., but now humanoid robots have been mentioned in an important position.
The first robot innovation center in mainland China is the National Robot Innovation Center established in Shenyang in June 2018.
Specifically, the first provincial-level humanoid robot innovation center in China is the "Beijing Humanoid Robot Innovation Center" established in Yizhuang, Beijing in November 2023.
At the end of April this year, the Beijing Humanoid Robot Innovation Center released the world's first full-size humanoid robot "Tiangong" with pure electric drive for humanoid running, which can run stably at a speed of 6 km/h.
Pictured: Full-size humanoid robot "Tiangong", Qiming Venture Partners
However, compared with the Beijing Humanoid Robot Innovation Center, the Shanghai National and Local Humanoid Robot Innovation Center (hereinafter referred to as the National and Local Center) has received more attention from ordinary people.
At the WAIC held in Shanghai in July, the Guodi Center launched a humanoid robot called "Qinglong" and open-sourced its related technology, which is also the world's first open-source full-size general-purpose humanoid robot public version machine.
Figure: Qinglong Robotics, CSDN
Regarding the task of the Robotics Innovation Center, the head of the market of Shanghai Guodi Center mentioned in an interview during WAIC that their goal is to carry out rapid iteration of technology by gathering the strength of the entire industry, and then open source the iterative technology. "In the future, I will open source one version of the public version of the computer every year, and this year is the first."
Therefore, the innovation center essentially bears the responsibility of mobilizing local resources and promoting the development of the local humanoid robot industry.
With April as the node, humanoid robot centers in Guangdong, Zhejiang, Anhui, Chengdu and other provinces and cities have also landed one after another, and relevant results have been released.
For example, in June, the Chengdu Humanoid Robot Innovation Center launched China's first Raydiculous-Denoise Diffusion Probabilistic Robot Model (R-DDPRM), China's first humanoid robot task generation model based on visual diffusion architecture. Zhejiang Humanoid Robot Innovation Center released the first self-developed humanoid robot "Navigator No. 1"; Anhui Humanoid Robot Innovation Center released the first humanoid robot product "Qijiang No. 1" and so on.
Obviously, not only Beijing and Shanghai, but also all provinces and cities are also very concerned about the development of the humanoid robot industry. The reason behind this is related to the particularity of the humanoid robot industry.
According to Musk, the popularity of humanoid robots in the future will be 10 times that of automobiles, and the market size of the industry may exceed $150 billion.
Unlike the Internet, AI and other software technologies that focus more on online, as a combination of mechanical and electronic information technology, humanoid robots are actually more like cars or mobile phones.
The key point is that as a physical industry with a wide range of technical fields and complex production processes, it can not only create a huge industrial output value, drive local employment, and even drive the entire surrounding area to achieve industrial upgrading.
Taking the automotive industry as an example, as the "jewel in the crown of industry", a car can involve tens of thousands of parts and thousands of upstream and downstream suppliers.
In 2023, China's automobile manufacturing industry will achieve an operating income of 10,097.58 billion yuan and a total profit of 508.63 billion yuan, which shows the huge scale of its industry. Today, the automobile industry has become a pillar industry in Wuhan, Guangzhou, Shanghai and other regions.
Similarly, humanoid robots also involve thousands or even tens of thousands of parts from batteries, arms, linear joints and other parts. Therefore, whether in terms of technology or industrial added value, humanoid robots are entirely likely to be on a par with the automobile industry and become the second pearl in the industrial crown.
This is also one of the reasons why various provinces and cities are actively preparing to build humanoid robot innovation centers and vigorously promote the development of the humanoid robot industry.
图：擎天柱机器人零部件成本拆解，Morgan Stanley
How to become the first city of humanoid robots?
Of course, if you want to become an industrial highland for humanoid robots, it is not enough to rely on an innovation center.
Just as the automotive industry depends on the local industrial base, supply chain and consumer market, humanoid robots are also subject to these conditions when the industry is implemented.
For example, among the more representative enterprises in the humanoid robot industry, UBTECH and Zhuji Power are located in Shenzhen, Flexiv (Feixi Technology), MindMinds Robot and Zhiyuan Robot are concentrated in Shanghai, Galaxy General is in Beijing, and Unitree Technology and Youlu Robot are in Hangzhou.
Figure: Urban distribution of representative enterprises of humanoid robots, industry image limitation map
One of the most important reasons why they are concentrated in these cities is the supply chain.
Specifically, the "Industry Quadrant" sorted out the most critical core components of the humanoid robot, and found the head suppliers of these parts in China and the distribution of these enterprises.
The "Industry Quadrant" finds that these supply chain enterprises are mainly distributed in two regions in mainland China, one is the Yangtze River Delta region with Shanghai as the center, and the other is the Pearl River Delta region with Shenzhen as the center.
Figure: The core components of the humanoid robot supply chain represent the enterprises and distribution, and the industry is like a limit diagram
We can see this more clearly on a larger scale. According to the data of enterprise investigation, the current mainland robot-related enterprises are mainly concentrated in Shenzhen, Guangzhou, Shanghai and Suzhou, these four cities have 49,400, 44,100, 36,100 and 35,200 related enterprises respectively.
Figure: Top 10 cities of robot-related enterprises in mainland China, industry icon restriction map
The reason why these supply chain enterprises are gathered in the "Yangtze River Delta" and "Pearl River Delta" has a deep relationship with the previous industrial development of these two regions.
For example, the Yangtze River Delta region has always been an important town in the mainland's automobile industry, and its layout in the new energy automobile industry chain is particularly prominent. In recent years, the Yangtze River Delta region (Shanghai, Jiangsu, Zhejiang, Anhui) has formed a complete industrial chain including vehicle manufacturing, power batteries, motors, electronic control and other core components. In 2023, the output of new energy vehicles in the Yangtze River Delta region will be 3,417,800 units, accounting for 36.2% of the country's total output.
At the same time, many technologies and products of new energy vehicles can be reused in humanoid robots.
For example, Musk has repeatedly mentioned in public that Tesla's technology in the field of electric vehicles, such as batteries, motors, software and chips, can be applied to the development of humanoid robots.
The Pearl River Delta is similar to the Yangtze River Delta, but in addition to being supported by the automotive industry chain, the Pearl River Delta also has a strong consumer electronics industry.
At present, the Pearl River Delta region has formed a Pearl River electronic information industry agglomeration area with Shenzhen as the R&D center and Dongguan, Huizhou and other cities as production bases. This area is the largest electronic communication manufacturing base in the country, known as the "Guangdong Electronic Information Industry Corridor". Among them, Shenzhen's Huaqiangbei is famous for electronic products, and Dongguan has always had the reputation of an electronic city.
Whether it is the new energy vehicle industry or the electronic information industry, its strong technology, industry and supply chain foundation have become a fertile ground for cultivating humanoid robots. And this in turn has another impact, that is, whether it is new energy vehicles or the electronic information industry, it is also an important scenario for humanoid robots to take the lead in landing.
For example, as mentioned earlier, Tesla's Optimus will be the first to be applied in its own car production plant. Zhou Jian, the founder of UBTECH, also mentioned, "UBTECH humanoid robots are expected to enter automobile factories by the end of 2024 to achieve small-scale delivery." Kepler CEO Hu Debo also said at the 2024 World Artificial Intelligence Conference that he has received orders from logistics, automobile manufacturing, metallurgy and other industries.
Therefore, whether from the perspective of industrial base, supply chain conditions, or proximity to the consumer market, the Pearl River Delta region represented by Shenzhen and Guangzhou, and the Yangtze River Delta region represented by Shanghai and Hangzhou are more suitable for the development of humanoid robots.
And they also have more advantages than other cities to become the "first city of Chinese humanoid robots".
epilogue
While humanoid robots have only been widely discussed today, government-level attention to them occurred much earlier.
At the beginning of the century in 2001, the Ministry of Science and Technology published an article entitled "Science and Technology Outlook in the 21st Century - Intelligent Robots" on its official website, which mentioned an intelligent robot that has feelings, can think, can act and can communicate with people, and believes that this kind of robot will be ubiquitous, and it will become an indispensable part of people's lives in the 21st century like computers and networks.
Such "prophecies" did not wait long.
In 2021, the national 14th Five-Year Plan has put the robot industry in an important position.
Among them, the "14th Five-Year Plan for the Development of Robot Industry" issued by the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology and the National Development and Reform Commission and other fifteen departments proposes that by 2025, the mainland will become the source of global robot technology innovation, a high-end manufacturing cluster and a new highland for integrated applications.
In 2023, with the breakthrough of large-scale model technology, "humanoid robot" began to appear frequently at various important national conferences as an important keyword.
In January 2023, the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology and other 17 departments issued the "Robot +" Application Action Implementation Plan, proposing that by 2025, the density of robots in the manufacturing industry will double compared with 2020, and the depth and breadth of application in the service robot and special robot industry will be significantly improved.
In August 2023, the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology and other four departments issued the "Implementation Plan for the New Industry Standardization Pilot Project (2023-2035)", proposing to build a standard system for humanoid robots and regard humanoid robots as one of the key areas of the future industry.
In November 2023, the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology issued the "Guiding Opinions on the Innovation and Development of Humanoid Robots", proposing to establish an innovation system by 2025, complete machine products to reach the international advanced level, and by 2027, the comprehensive strength of the industry to reach the world's advanced level.
Guided by national policies, regional policies have also begun to follow up.
For example, Hangzhou proposed in April this year that it would strive to achieve an output value of more than 50 billion yuan in the whole industrial chain of intelligent robots in 2026. Of course, Hangzhou is not alone, in fact, from 2023, the competition of local governments around the humanoid robot industry chain has begun.
In May 2023, Shanghai issued the "Shanghai Three-Year Action Plan for Promoting the High-quality Development of Manufacturing Industry (2023-2025)", which specifically mentioned accelerating the innovation and development of humanoid robots. Ten days later, Shenzhen's Action Plan for Accelerating the High-quality Development and High-level Application of Artificial Intelligence (2023-2024) also mentioned humanoid robots.
In June, Beijing also issued the "Beijing Robot Industry Innovation and Development Action Plan (2023-2025)", which provided policy guidance for the humanoid robot industry for the first time, and proposed to step up the layout of humanoid robots, benchmark the world's leading humanoid robot products, and support enterprises and universities to carry out humanoid robot products, key components and engineering.
On the whole, from policy promotion to industrial landing, although the humanoid robot industry is in the ascendant, a blueprint for building a world industrial highland for humanoid robots has been drawn.
In the future, a spark can also start a prairie fire.
- Reference: https://www.gov.cn/xinwen/2018-01/20/content_5258777.htm