The story takes place in a dystopian earth decades later. The whole world is full of black and dark tones. The boundaries between humans and machines are becoming more and more blurred. Philosophical thinking on propositions such as life, emotion, and human nature.
Entrepreneurs in the technology industry seem to love “cyberpunk” far more than the general population. Many founders like to draw inspiration from cyberpunk movies, integrate some sci-fi elements into the company’s direction, and use this to tell the prospects and trends that the capital market understands and firmly believes.
There are not a few industries affected by cyberpunk, but the one with the most direct influence and even upgraded to industry belief is undoubtedly the “bionic robot” track that is currently hotly debated by public opinion.
Cyber-style product positioning
For example, in the recent speech that refreshed the screen, in addition to the “feelings of crossing the trough of life”, Lei Jun also carried a lot of “private goods”. The most discussed by the outside world is Xiaomi’s humanoid bionic robot CyberOne.
Lei Jun, who is advancing from “Rebs” to “Resque”, has not concealed his love for cyberpunk at all. He uses the prefix “Cyber” in the product name, which is full of cyber flavor. At the same time a year ago, Xiaomi also launched the first-generation bionic quadruped robot CyberDog, also named “Cyber”.
The reason why the outside world uses “Resque” as Lei Jun’s new title is directly related to Elon Musk. The latter is also a fan of cyberpunk. He once named his electric pickup as Cybertruck, and Musk also likes to find inspiration from cyberpunk movies. Tesla, which was unveiled at the Artificial Intelligence Day event last year.
Bot, renamed Optimus by Musk, the new name comes from the protagonist “Optimus” in “Transformers”.
Not only the “cyberization” in the name, the product positioning of the bionic robot also has a strong cyber style. For example, Xiaomi’s introduction to CyberOne: “CyberOne can accompany you to be happy, and like an old friend, it can give you a hug when you are lost.”
In order to meet the needs of “accompanying”, Xiaomi has equipped CyberOne with the self-developed MiAI environmental semantic recognition engine, speech emotion recognition engine and other capabilities, which can realize 85 kinds of environmental speech recognition and 45 kinds of human emotion recognition in 6 categories. Like scenes in many cyberpunk movies, robots are expected to become people’s “best friends.”
It is a pity that the cost of CyberOne is as high as 600,000 to 700,000 yuan, and it is only a “verification machine” at this stage, and the time for mass production is far away. Tesla’s “Optimus Prime” still exists on the PPT, and even the initial live demonstration was played by a real person, so that it was preempted by Lei Jun on the “prototype”.
The good news is that “bionic robots” may still be a concept, but “bionic robot dogs” are already available. Xiaomi’s CyberDog, Tencent’s Jamoca, Yushu Technology’s Go1… Many of these products can already complete jumping, running, rolling and even stepping on plum blossom piles, and the price has been as low as 10,000 yuan, competing to target the consumer level. In the market, it has generally begun to “plant grass” for young people on short video platforms.
This is also where the “bionic robot” has been criticized.
Many video bloggers have shot a lot of content about “walking the robot dog”, which can be said to have earned enough attention. At the same time, they also revealed such a scene to the outside world: even some robot dogs dancing on important stages, the actual application is not Unsatisfactory, the robot dogs in many videos roll directly to the ground when they go down the stairs, but what they can satisfy is the freshness pursued by a few geeks.
As for whether there is a market for cyber-flavored bionic robots? This question does not seem difficult to answer, and what happened to Boston Dynamics is the best example.
Boston Dynamics that was “disgusted”
Whether it is a bionic robot or a quadruped robot dog, Boston Dynamics, which was born in 1992, is the “originator” type of existence, and it can even be said that it is technically unparalleled.
For quite a long time, Boston Dynamics has been a veritable top player in the industry. Even if the marketing is mainly to share the video of the robot on YouTube, almost every time a new dynamic is released, it will cause a global discussion.
It is such a “net red company”, but it has changed hands three times in seven years.
Boston Dynamics was acquired for $3 billion in 2013, led by Android co-founder Andy Rubin, and placed under the “future-focused research” Google X project. With the endorsement, the first-generation Atlas of Boston Dynamics quickly emerged, and then a series of bionic robots such as Wildcat and Spot came out, constantly refreshing people’s understanding of “robots”.
However, in 2017, it was announced that Boston Dynamics would be transferred to SoftBank of Japan. Although the most discussed reason is that Boston Dynamics serves the military, Jonathan Rosenberg, who was in charge of the “Replicator” project, had no intention of stating the reason in his remarks in November 2015: “As a start-up company of our size , we can’t spend more than 30% of our resources on something that takes 10 years.”
It can be proved that SoftBank has accelerated the commercialization process after taking over Boston Dynamics, including the development of the Spot Mini with bright commercialization prospects, the launch of the Spot robot leasing service, and its efforts in warehousing and logistics scenarios. The result was not as optimistic as imagined. The annual sales volume of Spot robots was only a few hundred units, and the high price restricted the development of the consumer market, which eventually became a burden that SoftBank wanted to get rid of.
According to Boston Dynamics founder Mark Rayporter: “Without 25 years of painstaking research, it is not enough to commercialize.” But the capital market obviously does not have such patience. In December 2020, South Korea’s Hyundai Motor Group offered $800 million for about 80% of Boston Dynamics, a valuation that has shrunk by two-thirds in seven years.
At that time, many people attributed the reason to SoftBank’s own business crisis, and compared the sale of Boston Dynamics to SoftBank’s sale of assets such as Ali and ARM. But less than half a year later, SoftBank spent $2.8 billion to acquire a 40% stake in AutoStore. AutoStore is a company that mainly develops warehousing robots. Its business focus is the logistics and warehousing industry that Boston Dynamics wants to break through.
In the 30th year since the birth of Boston Dynamics, the robot is still known as “the pearl at the top of the manufacturing crown”, the bionic robot is still the tip of the robot pyramid, and Boston Dynamics is still the “star enterprise” in the bionic robot industry. Why? Momentum has become an abandoned child of Google and Softbank?
It is not only Boston Dynamics that needs to think about this issue. A robotics company that is actively transforming into industry has fallen out of favor. It seems that domestic companies that focus on “accompanying” should reflect on it.
Imagination loses to commercialization
In almost all ancient civilizations, there is a legend that “God created man”. It is precisely the beliefs that originate from the depths of human civilization that make us rush for “bionic robots”.
As early as the end of the last century, electronic pets were popular all over the world. Although the products at that time were only equipped with the most basic machine learning technology, they were still loved by many children. The Phoebe Elf, which went on the market in 1998, has sold more than 40 million pieces worldwide; the electronic robot pet AIBO released by Sony in 1999 is regarded by many Japanese users as a family member who gets along day and night.
If the humanoid bionic robot can simulate the process of “perception-cognition-decision-execution” of human beings in different scenarios under the empowerment of artificial intelligence technology, it may become the spiritual sustenance of a generation like electronic pets, and at the same time, it will not be too small. The space of imagination.
But the real world is different from cyberpunk after all. People do not lack emotional sustenance. Family members, friends, pets and even virtual people can play such roles. What is urgently needed is the lack of productivity.
Even though Optimus is very close to human form, but in the official statement: “Optimus’ current mission is to reduce the production cost of automotive products, and at the same time can replace human beings in dangerous, boring, repetitive or occupational hazards, the focus is still on Fill the labor gap.” However, the main purpose of the machine to replace the human is efficiency, blindly letting the machine imitate the humanoid work, more or less deviated.
Following this logic, biped or quadruped robots are not just needed at this stage. In civilian applications, “wheeled” can solve 99% of the problems, and in military scenarios, tracks can also solve 90% of the problems, leaving biped or quadruped robots is actually a long tail market.
You can refer to the point of view of Yan Yu, an engineer at the Zhongbing Intelligent Innovation Research Institute: “The footed robot is more suitable for walking indoors or in industrial scenarios. It is suitable for factory inspections, and it is also suitable for outdoor scenes of soil slopes or gravel roads. Equipped with cameras, it can do some functions such as detection of dangerous goods or detonation, and different settings can be made according to different tasks. For example, railway maintenance, robots can be used to patrol back and forth between the tracks.”
What’s more, in the application of these sub-scenarios, “footed” is not the only solution. Compared with the complex mechanical structure of footed robots, “flying” drones are undoubtedly a more mature and lower-cost choice. Under the product development concept of “subtraction by hardware, addition by software”, bionic robots with overly complex hardware structures are by no means mainstream, and can even be said to be an advanced product.
With harsh application scenarios, small market space, huge R&D investment, and high maintenance costs, bionic robots have a lot of room for imagination, but the commercial prospects are not sexy.
There is reason to believe that Xiaomi, Tesla and other players of the manufacturer are well aware of the application status of bionic robots. The start-up companies represented by Yushu Technology have begun to develop industrial scenarios, trying to assist staff in security inspections, detection and exploration, and public rescue in special scenarios such as complex terrain and harsh environments. And those giants with a single function and high marketing have other ideas.
Combination of car and robot
At present, among the players involved in “bionic robots”, car manufacturers or brands that clearly want to launch automotive products account for a considerable proportion.
Not only Hyundai Motor, the “new owner” of Boston Dynamics, but also Xiaopeng Pengxing, an ecological enterprise of Xiaopeng Motors, has launched a robot code-named “Little White Dragon”. Baidu released a new concept car of “Automobile Robot” in early June… In the words of He Xiaopeng, the founder of Xiaopeng Motors: “In the future, the manufacturers of smart cars will also be the manufacturers of smart robots. Smart cars and smart robots will be the same industry in the future, and can produce the effect of 1+1>2.”
A popular explanation is that the boundaries between bionic robots and smart cars are blurred, and they can empower each other in areas such as autonomous driving, power systems, and intelligent interaction. Especially in terms of autonomous driving, once the bionic robot is mass-produced, it will provide a large amount of scene data for autonomous driving, and scene recognition is just needed for autonomous driving above L4 level. Auto companies have unparalleled innate advantages in making bionic robots.
Perhaps there is another possibility.
After the launch of Xiaopeng Pengxing’s “Little White Dragon”, although the products at this stage mainly provide children with an interesting riding experience, which can be regarded as a large toy for children, it has frequently disclosed to the outside world that “creating products suitable for family consumption” The ambition of an intelligent bionic robot living with human beings in the scene. In the atmosphere of the general surge in the concept of robots, it is undoubtedly beneficial to Xiaopeng’s financing and market value.
The interaction between Lei Jun and CyberOne did not seem to have caused Xiaomi’s stock price to rise sharply, but the rise of some robot concept stocks and Xiaomi concept stocks is an indisputable fact. Robot concepts such as Zhongjing Electronics, Wenyi Technology, and Saixiang Technology have reached the daily limit, and Xiaomi concepts such as Shengli Precision and Yuhuan CNC have also enjoyed gratifying gains.
Following the end of Internet giants to build cars, bionic robots are becoming a new topic of conversation. Not only can they gain the favor of the capital market for product development, but they can also take the opportunity to increase brand exposure and create “hot searches” in a low-cost way. , with the help of good news to continue to stimulate the stock price.
So much so that CICC made a public statement after Lei Jun’s anniversary speech: mobile phone factories and automobile factories have settled in the humanoid track, which proves that the humanoid track has sufficient commercial value and development potential, but the prototypes released by major manufacturers are currently The machine is still in the stage of technological iteration and lacks mature application scenarios, and the industry development stage is still relatively early. At the same time, the market sentiment has been fermenting for a period of time, and the valuations of some companies lacking fundamental support are facing the risk of correction. It is recommended that everyone pay attention to the growth of high-quality companies from the perspective of fundamentals.
As predicted by McKinsey in the relevant report, in 2030, 15%-30% of the jobs in the world will change due to the popularity of robots. Such a prospect is undoubtedly exciting, and it is also the future that companies such as Boston Dynamics firmly believe. However, most bionic robots on the market can only do some simple actions, and the distance from the imagination is no less than the real world and cyber movies. gap.
Even so, the topic of bionic robots will continue for a long time, because there are always people who can see “opportunities” from new outlets.
write at the end
The biggest “enemy” of bionic robots at this stage may be the metaverse with the same cyberpunk color.
Compared with bionic robots that cost tens of thousands of yuan at every turn, people only need to wear VR glasses to enter the immersive virtual world, and interact with those full, real and delicate virtual characters to meet contemporary needs such as chatting, talking, and companionship. The spiritual sustenance that young people need.
At present, some virtual idols are trying to lose their “idol status” and create a companion-style personality through interaction and immersive experience, so as to open up for users.”
The path of outputting emotions”. Joi, the holographic virtual girlfriend who appeared in the movie “Blade Runner: 2049”, may arrive earlier than the bionic robot.
Perhaps in the not too distant future, we will see a cyber-style battle between bionic robots and virtual humans.
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