NEW TRACK| With the blessing of general artificial intelligence, the robot market is hot again!

"When GPT was just popular last year, we judged that it would have a great impact on the service robot industry. However, judging from the current development, there is an impact, but not so quickly. Ji Yafei, general manager of the commercial service robot division of No. 9 Company, said in a recent interview.

Previously, Figure 01 was able to perform a series of simple grasping and placing actions according to human verbal instructions with the blessing of OpenAI, which also made the track of robots hot. At NVIDIA's 2024 GTC AI conference, "robots" have become the key word, and NVIDIA has released a new developer kit Nova Orin for the autonomous mobile robot platform Nova Carter AMR, which was previously jointly built with Nine, aiming to simplify the secondary development process of robots, improve development efficiency, and expand the application boundaries of AI robots.

"From the perspective of landing scenarios, such as hotel service robots, artificial intelligence large models are useful in the long run, but in the short term, in the current scenario, large models need more data to be poured into the database, and then analyzed and identified by algorithms to derive answers to the current scenarios, which still takes some time. Ji Yafei thinks.

According to the report of the Chinese Institute of Electronics, the global robot market will reach US$51.3 billion in 2022, with a compound growth rate of 14% from 2017 to 2022, of which the market size of service robots will be US$21.7 billion.

In fact, with the deepening of the aging of the population, the demand areas such as medical care and public services continue to expand, and enterprises need to improve efficiency and reduce costs, robot foundry will become a long-term stable trend, and there is huge market potential and development space for service robots.

At the same time, with the continuous improvement of the mainland catering and distribution robot industry chain, and gradually realize industrialization, the recovery of the tourism industry, the rapid development of smart hotels, the demand for robot guidance, reception or distribution is increasing, and at the same time, under the trend of intelligence, the performance and richness of robot products are improved, and the market size will maintain a continuous growth trend.

From burning money to rationality

"After the baptism and precipitation in 2023, the entire service robot market is becoming rational. Ji Yafei said.

Judging from the development of the past few years, in 2015 and 2016, the robot market was once tepid, and after 2020, the "no contact" factor promoted, disinfection robots, food delivery robots, etc., have flourished with the intervention of capital, and some practitioners even in order to expand market share, blind distribution, free services, etc., and finally lead to a tight capital chain.

"The robot is a high-tech complex, and if the quality control is not good, the cost of various costs such as subsequent repairs will be very high. On the one hand, the original model of free distribution has basically failed, and most of the robot suppliers themselves cannot do things that consume manpower and financial resources, or need to return to the essence of business, to make a profit, to survive. On the other hand, at the level of actual scenarios, for example, the perception of hotels is also constantly changing, from the beginning of the robot as an ornament and mascot, to the later need to discover the value of the robot, feel that the robot is useful and can provide value, "they will purchase robots in a tight budget." ”

According to the data revealed by Ji Yafei, the service robot of the nine company in the hotel, on average, can be activated 60 times a day, if each robot needs 5-10 minutes of time in the hotel, it can be as high as 600 minutes a day, even if half of the time is compressed, it is about 300 minutes, which is equivalent to four or five hours a day for the hotel to send things, if these times rely on manual work, it is relatively wasteful, the robot can better cooperate with people, improve efficiency, which is more important in the hotel scene.

It is understood that up to now, Nine Robot has established in-depth cooperative relations with well-known hotel groups such as Hilton, Marriott, Jin Jiang, Intercontinental, Atour, Chaumet, Green, etc. In 2023, the service robot of Nine Company has ended the stage of burning money and realized commercialization.

Stand firm in the terminal distribution market

"In 2023, we have also struggled, and many robot manufacturers have cut into different scenarios such as cleaning, and we have settled down and finally decided that if we get involved in the field of distribution, we still have to do our best in this field. Ji Yafei said.

Some people in the industry believe that the core of the delivery robot lies in the distribution, and optimizing this function to the extreme is the cornerstone of product value, and it is also the focus of customers' attention, and in terms of product quality, supply stability and after-sales service, it should also ensure that it can meet the actual needs of the hotel and other demanders. Finally, the robot should be reasonably priced, of excellent quality, and provide hotels with added value beyond delivery services, rather than a marketing gimmick.

At present, the indoor scene of terminal distribution of Nine Company provides two product lines, one is a delivery robot based on distribution in hotels and buildings, including Nine sugar cubes and the now launched Nine flying saucer delivery robot, and the other is a food delivery robot based on restaurant delivery, launched by Nine Full Food Delivery Robot, both of which are for domestic and overseas markets.

"For customers, cost reduction is not only low enough, but also invisible cost is low enough, for example, after the robot arrives at the hotel, the quality must be good enough, the hardware is reliable, the software is adaptable, and there is basically no need for after-sales. At the same time, Ji Yafei said that up to now, Nine Robot has established the most extensive service network in the industry, with more than 200 service sites, which can ensure fast and reliable service response.

The future is towards humanoid robots

For the current fire of humanoid robots, Ji Yafei believes that the development of humanoid robots is mainly composed of three capabilities, one is the brain, including algorithm drive, the second is the driving ability of the chassis, and the third is the dexterous operation ability of the upper arm, which is closely related to the brain.

"For example, the driving ability of the chassis, the most important thing is to have a strong obstacle crossing ability. At present, some robots on the market are wheeled, tracked, and bipedal, but those that can really achieve commercialization and economy and can be put into commercial scenarios are wheeled robots. Ji Yafei believes that when the wheeled robot encounters obstacles, it can not only avoid obstacles lightly, but also lift its legs, and in the next three to five years, this form of robot will be the focus of the No. 9 robot.

Regarding the robot that can operate flexibly with the upper arm, "the main scene of the hotel robot is still delivery, from point A to point B, and we also hope to add two arms to the robot in the future, so that it can carry out simple grabbing." For example, if a guest needs a bottle of spring water, the robot can go to the designated container, and the container will respond to the robot, and the robot will take a bottle of water by itself and deliver it to the guest's room. Ji Yafei said that this is a direction for future development.

The development of humanoid robots, with the addition of giants, some people expect that 2024 is expected to be the first year of mass production of humanoid robots. Previously, Goldman Sachs recently predicted that the market size of humanoid robots will reach $37.8 billion in 2035, a significant increase from the forecast of $6 billion in 2022.

Goldman Sachs believes that technological advancement is a key factor driving market growth, and while the material cost of high-spec robots will drop by about 40% in a year, humanoid robots will be able to achieve profitability faster, and the calculation of humanoid robot shipments has increased by 4 times compared to 2022 to 1.4 million units.

Many domestic financial institutions also maintain an optimistic trend, such as Zheshang Securities, which expects that the demand for humanoid robots in 2030 will be about 1.77 million units, of which 3~5 years will be the first to be applied in short- and medium-term industrial and commercial scenarios, and 5~10 years in the medium and long-term personal scenarios will have a large application space.

In short, whether it is a service robot serving scenarios such as hotels, or a humanoid robot that has become popular recently, with the blessing of general artificial intelligence, the scenarios in which robots provide services and value are increasing, and it is worth paying attention to whether the commercial realization of the robot industry continues to expand.