“Hey, I’ll prepare the bread and fruit individually.” Upon listening to the command from the host, the humanoid robotic Qinglong prolonged its arms and gently picked up a bit of sentimental bread with its metal fingers, inserting it down into the basket on the desk.
On the World Synthetic Intelligence Convention (WAIC) 2024 in Shanghai, one of the vital influential AI occasions throughout the world tech ecosystem, the Nationwide Native Joint Humanoid Robotic Innovation Middle on Thursday unveiled the open-source general-purpose humanoid robotic Qinglong for the primary time. The occasion marks the debut of China’s first full-sized general-purpose humanoid robotic mannequin, together with the discharge of its associated open-source applied sciences.
Why it issues: The disclosing of Qinglong marks China’s entry into the superior discipline of full-sized general-purpose humanoid robots. Its open-source initiative is meant to speed up innovation, collaboration, and improvement throughout the world robotics and AI communities, doubtlessly driving developments in a spread of industries.
Particulars: Throughout the Summit on Humanoid Robots and Embodied Intelligence Improvement Discussion board at WAIC 2024, the Nationwide Native Joint Humanoid Robotic Innovation Middle demonstrated Qinglong’s operation and design ideas on website.
Qinglong has been independently developed by Humanoid Robots (Shanghai) Restricted, a brand new R&D establishment established by main trade enterprises with a registered capital of 1 billion RMB ($140 million). The corporate was designated because the Nationwide Native Joint Humanoid Robotic Innovation Middle by the Ministry of Trade and Data Expertise of China in Could 2024.
Qinglong stands at 185cm tall and weighs 80kg, in line with the corporate. It includes a extremely bionic torso and anthropomorphic movement management, supporting multi-modal mobility, notion, interplay, and manipulation. With 43 energetic levels of freedom, Qinglong achieved a most joint peak torque of 400 N·m (Newton-meters) and 400 TOPs (Tera Operations Per Second) of computational energy.
The humanoid robotic combines cell decrease limbs for agile strolling with light-weight, high-precision higher limbs for operations, the on-site presentation said. The corporate claimed that the mannequin helps fast strolling, agile impediment avoidance, steady incline and decline motion, and resistance to influence interference, making it a really perfect platform for growing common synthetic intelligence software program and {hardware}.
“Within the 12 months of the Dragon this yr, we named our humanoid robotic Qinglong [meaning green dragon in Chinese] and initiated an open-source neighborhood for humanoid robotics,” stated Jiang Lei, Chief Scientist of the Nationwide Native Joint Humanoid Robotic Innovation Middle. “By way of open-sourcing, our objective is to introduce a brand new humanoid robotic mannequin yearly, every named after one of many Chinese language zodiac animals, to foster a humanoid robotic innovation neighborhood distinctive to China,” he introduced on the discussion board.
Jiang additionally introduced the launch of the OpenLoong open-source neighborhood web site, developed by the Innovation Middle. The web site consists of the discharge of the robotic’s {hardware} construction and parameters, with the embodied intelligence software program package deal set to be open-sourced quickly.
Context: On the identical day, Tesla debuted its second-generation humanoid robotic Optimus on the Shanghai World Expo Exhibition Corridor throughout WAIC 2024. Based on Tesla sales space workers, in contrast with the primary era, Optimus has improved its strolling pace by 30% whereas sustaining upright posture. Its fingers have additionally advanced to carry out delicate duties similar to gripping eggs and dealing with heavy objects.
Tesla plans to begin restricted manufacturing of humanoid robots subsequent yr, with over 1,000 Optimus items anticipated to help in manufacturing duties at Tesla factories, in line with CEO Elon Musk.
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Jessie Wu is a tech reporter based mostly in Shanghai. She covers shopper electronics, semiconductor, and the gaming trade for TechNode. Join along with her through e-mail: jessie.wu@technode.com.
Extra by Jessie Wu