BEIJING: Holding, tilting and twisting a jug of milk to make latte art is no longer the unique skill of a barista — a humanoid robot could recently be seen swirling hearts into cups of coffee in Beijing.
At the 2023 World Robot Conference (WRC) kicked off last week in Beijing, various humanoid robots dazzled visitors with their proficiency in dance, basketball, coffee-making and other abilities, heralding a near future with increased numbers of intelligent robots working among people.
Since the beginning of the year, the development of AI foundation models has provided technical support for the industrial application of humanoid robots. More and more robot developers are using AI foundation models for the intelligent control of robots.
“With the AI foundation models, humanoid robots have had their autonomic decision-making abilities enhanced in real application scenarios,” said Wen Huanyu, an algorithm engineer at UBTECH Robotics Corp Ltd.
Unlike robots that receive simple instructions from people, humanoid robots to some degree already possess a semantic understanding ability, Wen said.
After hearing the voice command “I’m thirsty,” Youyou, a panda-like robot from UBTECH shown at the WRC, responded after just a few seconds. It walked toward the refrigerator, opened it, reached in to take out a drink, and then closed the door using its other hand, just as a human would.
A humanoid service robot called Cloud Ginger, which has more than 30 intelligent flexible joints, attracted much attention at a booth operated by Dataa Robotics. –Agencies
