Shulou(Shulou.com)06/03 Report--

AI and robots have long been used in scenarios such as industrial assembly lines. On the other hand, consumer intelligent machines have been testing repeatedly on the edge of the market explosion.

On the one hand, with the blessing of artificial intelligence, the scope of application of robots in the field of social services has been further expanded, and voice technology has also made human-computer interaction more natural, gradually breaking away from the "artificial intelligence barrier". But on the other hand, there has been no qualitative innovation in policy restrictions, market habits and product innovation. Robots have always stayed in the category of minority geeks and marketing gimmicks, and the popular pizza robot project in Silicon Valley was closed last year.

Because of the strict restrictions on interpersonal communication in this epidemic prevention work, the "hard core" operation of using intelligent machines to participate in related work has also gained a lot of appearance and attention.

They may be drones that shout to villagers over rural roads, or robots in communities that assist in police patrols, and they also appear in hospitals and public places to replace humans in disinfection tasks. You don't need to wear a mask, let alone worry about being infected by the virus.

Although they have only made limited technical changes compared with previous consumer "smart machines", they have shown great potential in epidemic prevention scenarios. Is there a future for intelligent service robots commissioned in the face of crisis? As one of the "killer applications" in the 5G era, can it usher in its own "spring" at this moment?

How to turn Service Robot into "epidemic Prevention weapon"

When we talk about service robots, how on earth do they play a role in epidemic prevention?

At present, there are three main functions:

1. Paramedical.

In the course of treatment, health care workers assist the robot in checking and administering drugs without entering the isolation ward, which can better reduce the risk of infection.

The United States used intelligent robots equipped with cameras, microphones and stethoscopes to treat the first new type of pneumonia in the United States, and doctors operated the robot outside the isolation window, the Guardian reported. can complete most of the diagnosis and treatment measures.

In Tongji Hospital in Wuhan and the sixth people's Hospital in Shanghai, there are also medical robots and medicine delivery robots, which help to undertake the work of nursing and disinfection, temperature measurement, cleaning and drug delivery, and so on.

two。 Public disinfection.

In public areas, some intelligent floor washing and disinfection robots have also joined the epidemic prevention force, in airports, railway stations and other areas, through autopilot to complete disinfection and cleaning operations, to avoid the gathering and contact of crowded places.

Not long ago, Shanghai Mobile launched a 5G-Cloud Cleaning disinfection and cleaning robot, which automatically sets the area instead of manual disinfection and cleaning in the area.

3. Daily service.

In addition, in some fixed-point isolation areas, intelligent robots also replace the service personnel and take on the important task of delivering food and food to the isolated people.

Of course, we also see that drones with voice modules and infrared imaging thermal lenses have achieved unprecedented and immediate results in preventing personnel from gathering, avoiding field supervision of front-line personnel, preventing secondary infection, and so on. But as we all know, China's low-altitude aircraft has a very strict control policy, and with the rebound of urban passenger flow after the end of the epidemic, the frequency of using drones will inevitably decline.

But the humanoid service robot is different, and the epidemic prevention incident not only gives the robot industry an excellent opportunity for military training, but also allows the public to get used to interacting with robots at close range. More importantly, after the epidemic, robots will enter the room as a "regular army" to maintain human health and safety at a critical moment.

The antecedent and Future of Intelligent Robot

We know that since 2014, there has been a surge of service robots, a large number of start-ups have joined in, and mobile robots with screens have emerged one after another. and has been introduced to the shopping mall to welcome guests, bank reception, family interaction, restaurant business and other consumption scenes.

According to the China Robot Industry Development report 2019, the global robot market will reach 29.41 billion US dollars in 2019. Among them, there are not only sophisticated robots that can process complex data and improve the overall computational efficiency, but also robots that can help labor-intensive enterprises reduce costs and increase efficiency and save an average of 20% of labor costs.

But so far, service robots have not been used on a large scale, and even the sophisticated pepper of Japan, such as Boston Dynamics and experienced battle, has failed to open the market window.

Driven by the epidemic, we have seen the collective recruitment of service robots, which has three basic prerequisites:

The overall upgrade of the 1.AI technology matrix.

Service-oriented robots need comprehensive solutions such as speech recognition, semantic understanding, computer vision, sensing technology, positioning and navigation, robot operating system and so on. The maturity of algorithm models in the past two years has begun to enable AI robots to communicate with people and the environment in a more natural way.

two。 The cost of feeling and thinking goes down.

The premise of widespread commercial use is a reasonable price. More and more rich and flexible public cloud services, mature open source algorithm models, and increasingly perfect 5G super-large networks all reduce the operating cost of the robot, while the efficiency is further improved.

3. Long-term value that can run through.

On the basis of performance-to-price ratio, in a market where there is no direct competition and the market is blank, the primary consideration is product performance and whether it can be delivered to the market with stable and long-term value. Previously, consumer robots, mostly in the nature of performance and entertainment, did not improve efficiency, but played an important role in this epidemic prevention.

Of course, does this mean the advent of large-scale market growth?

We still need to see the general characteristics of this service robot, first of all, limited innovation.

In addition to the sophisticated assistant robots needed in medical scenes, most cleaning and food delivery robots are modified on the basis of robot OS, which is basically similar to appliances that dare to call themselves smart homes equipped with Bluetooth WiFi, but realize the automation of certain services, and there is still a certain gap from "intelligence". For example, whether it is a disinfection robot or a medical supplies transport robot, the mobile scene needs to be set in advance. This means that the applicable environment is relatively limited.

Secondly, the core technology and parts of the robot industry still rely on imports, and the overall gap between China and German and Japanese enterprises in high-end products is still obvious, which leads to its high cost. This time, participation in epidemic prevention mainly depends on corporate donations. There is no clear profit model. And compared with the manual robot, the working effect can not be compared, can not solve too many and complex problems, such as corridors and other places is the dead corner of the robot. At present, robots can only sacrifice part of their efficiency in order to ensure human safety first, and the overall operation efficiency can not be very high.

In addition, the overall robot industry is not complete, not only the conversion rate of technical achievements from laboratory to B terminal landing is relatively low, but also good and bad in the upstream and downstream industrial chains such as user experience, software, content, services, and so on. How different brands of robots cooperate, so that investors and consumers are full of confusion.

Service robot opens the future "Gobang"

1. Add five senses of wisdom to the machine. On the basis of making the machine have multimodal comprehensive perception, terminal intelligence also needs to be advanced, through active understanding of human beings, intelligent computing, to provide better active services. For example, through intelligent identification and autopilot, quickly learn and adapt to different environments, different crowd density of service programs, reduce the frequency of manual intervention.

two。 The localization of core technology. The core components of the robot are mainly controllers, servo motors and reducers, accounting for 60-70% of the total cost of multi-joint robots. At present, they are largely dependent on imports. Not only the cost remains high, but also it is possible to face a "choke neck" crisis in the international situation. It is urgent to accelerate the domestic and sophisticated development.

3. Collaborative progress of related disciplines. In addition to the progress of AI algorithms and components, the improvement of intelligent performance also means the use of more complex and heavier components. To break through this bottleneck requires the progress of material science, and the improvement of the performance of medical service robots also requires the collaborative development of medicine, neuroscience and so on.

4. Fully pay attention to the market effect. The popularity of service robots also needs to give the market an opportunity to accept, for example, the challenges and changes that the epidemic brings to the hospital environment, business process, staffing and so on, become the premise of product segmentation. At present, most people's acceptance of new technology is not high, creating landing conditions for 2C.

5. Chinese-style soil without short board and long board. China's industrial soil also gives the robot industry some special advantages, such as a bolder sense of innovation and great market opportunities for customized services in some subdivided scenarios. In addition, the engineer dividend of China Mobile Internet and the international competitive advantage of AI software also make the Chinese industry not lag behind in the software layer. AI+ software + scenario has become the key for manufacturers to solve the problem.

When the five pieces are connected into a line, we will get robots that can better serve human beings, which is also the multiple advances of technology, commerce and humanities.

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