The full-fledged industrial chain and rich application scenarios in south China's tech hub of Shenzhen City has effectively facilitated the development of embodied artificial intelligence (AI), with more and more upgraded robots entering all walks of life.
EngineAI, a tech company founded in 2023, has developed a robot that has come under the spotlight for its performance of the dance of gangsters in the film "Kung Fu Hustle".
Located in Shenzhen's Nanshan District, the company bustles with visitors every day.
"We hope the robot can not only walk and jump, but also do something else. We will show you its new operating abilities in June. It will be able to pick up things from the ground and set a table," said Zhao Tongyang, founder and CEO of EngineAI.
The complete industrial chain has enabled EngineAI to register fast growth from a mini-sized one to a company with over 100 staff members and an operating area of over 1,000 square meters. Thanks to the industrial chain in the region, a design can be turned into a product in just a few days, according to Zhao.
"For example, if we design a structure today, and send the blueprint to a manufacturer, and we will dispatch our technicians to the factory this night for programming, and the product can be made in three days. It is impossible for many other industries. Usually they have to wait for weeks, one to three weeks. However, we just need to wait for hours or days. It's common in the Pearl River Delta where I can find all what I need for production," Zhao said.
Besides the industrial chain, rich application scenarios have also helped with the development of embodied AI in Shenzhen.
UBTECH Robotics, another tech company, has developed a kind of robots that can work in a factory.
"Oriented towards smart industrial production, we've developed the brand-new resilient Walker S1 robot. It is showing a scenario of transportation in a factory. With an automated navigation system and a visual recognition system, it can control and operate itself completely to move the boxes," said Tan Min, chief brand officer of UBTECH.
"In fact, there are eight industrial clusters worth one trillion yuan (137.3 billion U.S. dollars) each in Shenzhen or other parts of Guangdong, especially in the Greater Bay Area city cluster. They provide rich application scenarios. Thus, no matter which factory which the robots work in, they can play a role in an industrial cluster worth one trillion yuan. The clusters lay a solid market foundation for the development of humanoid robots," Tan said.
The UBTECH robots have been smart enough to cooperate in factory to improve their work efficiency.
Tan said the team of his company aims to further improve the factory robots, making each of them equal to 2.4 human workers in work capacity by the end of this year.
Full-fledged industrial chain, rich application scenarios fuel embodied AI development in Shenzhen
