Yesterday, the humanoid robot developed by Midea Group was exposed for the first time, this robot can not only dance, can "compare hearts", but also understand voice commands and complete corresponding operations according to instructions.
When the robot is given a voice command, "I'm thirsty, can you bring me a bottle of water?" The robot "understood" and brought the reporter a bottle of water on the table.
Wei Chang, vice president of Midea Group and CTO of Midea Group, said that at present, Midea has integrated R&D resources and established a humanoid robot innovation center for humanoid robot research and development, hoping to develop short-term landing products, and at the same time, it can also lay out medium and long-term technologies and products.
He introduced that Midea's robots are mainly divided into two parts: one is the robotization of household appliances, which integrates humanoid technology and robot technology into household appliances, such as vision, robotic arm, human-computer interaction, etc. The other focuses on the development of the whole machine of humanoid robots, and at the same time digs deep into the application scenarios and explores some scenarios that can be implemented in B-end robots.
Wei Chang believes that the core components of the humanoid robot itself are not a challenge to the United States, the United States has technical talents in this area, knows how to do it, and can quickly transfer to the development of humanoid robot parts, the real challenge of the humanoid robot is that its operation can cope with complex scenarios, so more investment is needed in the embodied intelligent algorithm.
Midea Group's layout in the field of robotics is very early. As early as 2015, Midea laid out the robot industry, and ranked among the top four in the global industrial robot industry through the acquisition of KUKA and other "actions". Last year, Midea announced that the company had laid out the humanoid robot business and officially became one of the international humanoid robot "players".
Recently, Zhong Zheng, deputy to the National People's Congress and vice president and chief financial officer of Midea Group, introduced in an interview during the two sessions that Midea Group has laid out collaborative robots, independently developed industrial AMRs (automatic mobile robots), and also set foot in the field of key components of humanoid robots, and will accelerate the design and development of humanoid robots in the future.
Zhong Zheng introduced that after the acquisition of KUKA, Midea Group has given priority to the development of localized business based on China's application market, and is committed to providing more cost-effective robot products to Chinese customers. On the one hand, in terms of common materials, KUKA leverages Midea Group's industrial chain to apply Midea's experience in standardization and efficiency-driven to the KUKA platform, and reduces product costs through independent research and development of key components. On the other hand, Midea Group is also committed to solving the "neck" problem of key components of heavy-duty industrial robots and promoting the integration of vertical fields.
Midea Group's revenue in the first three quarters of 2024 was 319 billion yuan, a year-on-year increase of 9.57%; net profit was 31.6 billion yuan, a year-on-year increase of 14.37%.