A brand-new quick-thinking interactive humanoid robot has caught wide attention after being unveiled in Shanghai on Tuesday for its wide range of performance capabilities, with the robot capable of riding a bicycle and even carrying out delicate tasks such as using a needle and thread.
The newly-launched robot is the latest in a series of eye-catching breakthroughs for China's robotics industry as the sector continues its rapid development.
The 1.3-meter-tall robot has also unlocked a range of new athletic skills, including riding a scooter and operating a self-balancing scooter with ease.
Featuring 28 different degrees of freedom (DOF), the robot is also equipped with a multimodal interaction model, enabling millisecond-level interactive responses.
It can also accurately judge and respond to human facial expressions and vocal tones. When asked, the robot says its purpose is to chat with its human counterparts, solve problems, and simply "make life more fun."
Peng Zhihui, co-founder of the company responsible for the new robot, stressed there is still a way to go to convincingly replicate the emotional level of a human.
"I believe the biggest challenge is enabling the robot to possess a level of intelligence as agile as that of a human. To achieve this, we need to make technological breakthroughs in three areas - motion intelligence, interactive intelligence, and operational intelligence," said Peng.
Additionally, the new robot has initially developed 'zero-shot' generalization capabilities for manipulating objects based on a large embodied model, which means it can learn to solve problems and respond to new challenges or tasks based on its own intuition.
For example, it can learn to pour water simply by watching videos of humans doing so, demonstrating the ability to extrapolate from learned tasks.
In addition, the robot can also recognize different types of cups without requiring repeated training for different shapes or sizes, marking a significant step toward the generalization and openness of embodied intelligence.
Many experts believe the robot has the potential to be utilized in various application scenarios in the future, including in the health care and service sectors, or may even be deployed to provide companionship in people's homes.
New interactive robot capable of riding bike set to serve in multiple scenarios
A China-led international standard on brain-computer interfaces (BCIs) reference architecture has been officially released, marking another major achievement for the country in international BCI standardization, according to the Standardization Administration of China (SAC) on Friday.
The first international standard in the BCI field led by China, on BCI terminology, was officially released last year.
The standard, published by the International Organization for Standardization and the International Electrotechnical Commission, addresses four core questions, namely what a BCI is, how it is used, what functions it has and how it can be implemented. It sorts out typical implementation models and builds a complete technical framework covering concepts, applications, functions and implementation.
It was drafted under the leadership of Chinese experts, together with experts from countries including Italy, the Republic of Korea, Britain, India and the United States.
"People's definition of brain-computer interfaces has also been evolving. In the early days, it was mainly about reading out intentions. After two or three decades of development, it is no longer just reading out. Simply put, it reads out signals, interprets them, and then regulates, intervenes in and influences them, forming a closed loop of reading and writing signals," said Pan Gang, one of the drafters of the international standard.
The standard groups the uses of BCIs into five categories. The first is real-time sensing of brain states such as attention, fatigue and cognitive load, which can be used for safety warnings in settings such as industrial operations.
"For patients with severe physical injuries or who cannot communicate, we use brain-computer interfaces to connect with external robots, including externally controlled wheelchairs, to carry out daily functions such as typing and drinking water," said Yu Yuntao, chair of the standardization technical subcommittee on BCIs.
BCIs can also be combined with rehabilitation robots and similar devices for neurorehabilitation training, helping patients with spinal cord injuries or strokes regain motor function. Through methods such as neurofeedback, they can help healthy people regulate attention and train cognition, improving or extending their existing abilities.
Combined with eye movement, voice, gestures and muscle signals, BCIs can also enable more accurate and flexible multimodal human-machine interaction.
China-led global standard sets framework for brain-computer interfaces
