Walking into the Zhiyuan Robot Manufacturing Factory, the first humanoid robot mass production site in Shanghai, it is like stepping into the future world: engineers are assembling various parts of humanoid robots in order, and hundreds of "fledgling" humanoid robots are neatly arranged, waiting to complete a series of action tests under the "leadership" of engineers.
The reporter visited the robot manufacturing factory located in the Lingang New Area of the Shanghai Free Trade Zone on the 18th, which has been put into operation for only a few months, and has rolled off the assembly line of 1,000 humanoid robots in 2024, and will achieve an annual output of thousands of units in 2025.
On February 18, the reporter saw in Shanghai's first humanoid robot mass production factory - Zhiyuan Robot Manufacturing Factory that engineers assembled various accessories of humanoid robots in order for testing.
The industry believes that 2025 will be the first year of mass production of humanoid robots, and the industry is breaking through the tipping point at an ultra-linear speed. Shanghai has the foundation of high-end manufacturing, a complete supply chain and industrial supporting facilities in the Yangtze River Delta, as well as rich university resources and talent reserves, which are the foundation for industrial acceleration.
"It is precisely because of the maturity of the upstream supply chain that we have the ability to build a humanoid robot in such a short period of time." Zhang Shaozheng, general manager of Zhiyuan Robot Manufacturing Department, introduced that the upstream precision machining links of many key components of humanoid robots are crossed with new energy vehicles, and these precision parts can be easily migrated to humanoid robot manufacturing.
Creating a body is only the first step. In the Zhangjiang Data Collection Center of Zhiyuan Robot, 100 humanoid robot "apprentices" are working together with data collectors in daily life scenes such as restaurants, bubble tea shops, and family houses. Pour tea, make drinks, lay tablecloths, iron clothes, fold quilts...... These humanoid robots mimic human daily actions and collect more than 1,000 operations per day.
According to the staff of the embodied business department of Zhiyuan Robot, a simple "pouring water" action usually requires the collection of nearly 100 pieces of high-quality data for model training.
On February 18, in the Zhangjiang Data Collection Center of Zhiyuan Robot, a number of humanoid robot "apprentices" were working together with data collectors.
Yao Maoqing, executive director of Zhiyuan Robotics Research Institute and president of the embodied business department, said that the action data collected by these "machine apprentices" based on real scenes will be uploaded to the cloud for training of various task models, and finally the general model capabilities formed through generalized learning can be deployed on each robot in the future.
Morgan Stanley recently released a list of the top 100 listed companies in the field of global humanoid robots, including 37 Chinese companies such as UBTECH and BYD. The Chinese Institute of Electronics predicts that by 2030, the market size of Chinese humanoid robots is expected to reach about 870 billion yuan.
At this stage, the manufacturing industry, which has a large number of "repetitive" task scenarios, is a "novice village" that is more suitable for humanoid robots to enter, and the flexibility of humanoid robots can just fill the gap between traditional automation and manual labor.
On February 18, data collectors were collecting data from humanoid robots in a supermarket scene
For example, Yao Maoqing said that in the logistics industry, many enterprises have realized the large-scale application of intelligent warehousing systems - relying on the collaborative operation of intelligent shelves and automatic guided vehicles, the position of the material box can be accurately located and fully automatic transfer can be completed. The "packing" scenario involves the permutation and combination of items of different sizes, which need to be adjusted in real time during the execution of the task, and even re-planned, reflected, and corrected in case of failure. "This kind of closed-loop control requires the ability of artificial intelligence, which is where humanoid robots excel." Yao Maoqing said.
Yao Maoqing said that the new generation of skilled workers is expected to turn to positions such as robot scheduling and solutions, and "untie" from repetitive and boring basic work.