DeepSeek has become popular this year, and with the rapid development of AI technology, the integration and development of artificial intelligence (AI) and robotics technology has accelerated in many fields, attracting the attention of many industry insiders.
Looking at the industry in depth, humanoid robots have more and more opportunities to “show up” recently. In April, the world’s first humanoid robot half marathon was held in Yizhuang, Beijing, which quickly attracted the attention of global media and audiences.
During the entire competition, there were constant controversies, hot spots and topics. In the end, “Tiangong Ultra” developed by Beijing Humanoid Robot Innovation Center, “Little Naughty Boy N2” by Songyan Power, and “Walker No. 2” by Shanghai Zhuoyide won the first, second and third place respectively.
Figure will deploy 100,000 humanoid robots
At the same time, according to new news on July 8, Figure founder and CEO Brett Adcock publicly stated that the cost of Figure’s latest designed robots has been reduced by about 90%, and its humanoid robots will be deployed on a large scale in the next four years, with the ability to produce 100,000 robots annually in the new factory.
He emphasized that in addition, Figure set a new industry record with a valuation of US$39.5 billion, a 15-fold increase from the valuation in 2024. The reason behind this surge in valuation is inseparable from Figure’s layout and large-scale training in industrial scenarios, as well as the support of mass production planning.
In addition, the leading humanoid robot companies have set their sights on training in major workshops. Musk was very confident in the “brain” of humanoid robots, that is, intelligence, at the beginning.
Musk has publicly promoted the mass production plan of Tesla (TSLA) Optimus robots several times, and put Optimus Gen3 into Tesla factories to perform tasks such as battery classification and equipment debugging, and continuously verify the practical ability of humanoid robots in industrial scenarios.
Behind the capital frenzy, there are almost industry giants at home and abroad. It is worth mentioning that in the first half of this year, the capital inflow into the humanoid robot field was even hotter, attracting about 30 billion yuan. Among them, domestic and foreign financing accounted for half each, attracting more than 60% of the financing amount. Foreign companies were dominated by Figure and Apptronik, and their valuations soared.
According to people familiar with the matter, Microsoft (MSFT) led Figure’s B+ round of financing with US$500 million, and simultaneously opened Azure AI infrastructure and multimodal large models (such as Claude 3.5) to help Figure-02 robots achieve an end-to-end closed loop of “natural language instructions-action planning-execution control”, and its semantic understanding accuracy was increased to 92%, so as to better execute industrial instructions.
WiMi actively promotes the application of robot technology
According to the data, Wimi Hologram Cloud Inc (WIMI), as a cutting-edge enterprise in the field of humanoid robots, relies on the advantages of large model algorithms, combines AI vision, voice and other multimodal technologies, and supports natural interactive dialogue. For example, its team has achieved breakthroughs in autonomous learning systems, improving action accuracy and task planning capabilities through simulation training, and accelerating the improvement of humanoid robots’ perception of the physical world.
At present, WiMi has established the “Micro-consciousness Quantum Research Center” to promote technology transformation in cooperation with universities and research institutions, focusing on key technologies such as machine learning algorithms and human-computer interaction, taking the lead in practicing in the industrial field, cooperating with industries such as automobile manufacturing and semiconductors, exploring industrial quality inspection, material handling and other scenarios, and will replace areas not covered by traditional industrial robots.
Conclusion
It can be said that while humanoid robots are receiving high attention from the whole society, it means that the development of the industry has officially surpassed the days of fighting alone and entered the stage of industrial collaboration. Humanoid robots will surpass the performance of humans in most jobs, making all jobs an option, and whether it is the services provided by humanoid robots or the industry in which humanoid robots themselves are located, collaboration will be the keyword for future development.
