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More than 10 years ago, when Jobs and the iPhone were still cool topics for a few people, including the most chatting people, they didn't realize how the "mobile Internet" would quickly reshape the world.
At this moment, the same story is repeating itself......
On December 29, 2023, UBTECH (shares**: 9880.)HK) was officially listed on the main board of the Hong Kong Stock Exchange, with a share price of HK$91 and a market capitalization of about HK$38 billion.
At the ceremony, UBTECH's new generation of industrial humanoid robot Walker S sounded the opening gong, which is the first listing ceremony in human history by a humanoid robot, and will also become a milestone event in the accelerated commercialization process of global humanoid robots.
Technology is changing the world in unimaginable ways and speeds.
Just as our grandparents, when they were younger, couldn't understand a world connected by smartphones and the internet.
On the eve of the fourth scientific and technological revolution, it is difficult for us to imagine how the explosion of new technologies will subversively change the world today.
The so-called subversiveness not only refers to the fact that a new technology product can quickly become a hit, but also refers to the "ecology" of the product that drives and leads the rapid change of the upstream and downstream, and then promotes the rapid change of the entire economic activity, and finally profoundly changes the production and lifestyle of human beings.
and even reshape the global industrial development pattern.
Every scientific and technological revolution will form a corresponding techno-economic paradigm.
March 1811, England proper.
With the popularity of automated textile machines, factory owners no longer need skilled workers, and prefer to hire cheap unskilled labor to operate the machines and save costs.
A large number of artisans gathered in anger and smashed machines and workshops. In just two years, the riots spread throughout England.
Historically known as the "Luddite Movement".
At the same time, new technologies have enabled leaps in productivity, such as the first large multinationals such as Birmingham Railway in the United Kingdom and General Electric in the United States.
People of insight who embrace them and invest in them quickly complete the primitive accumulation.
The Luddists smashed the loom.
A similar story is playing out again in the era of electrical appliances a hundred years later.
In 1907, there were 600 lamplighters in New York City. Their duty is to climb the lampposts and light the gas street lamps at dusk every day to keep the city from falling into darkness.
The electric light, which was born in 1880, has only been developed for more than 20 years, and it has reduced the trouble of manual lighting.
During this period, electrification and automation drove further industrial production efficiency, and a number of large industrial enterprises such as Ford Motor Company and General Motors Company emerged.
To this day, these ancient giants are still active in the capital market.
The wheels of history continue to move forward.
After more than 20 years of fermentation, computers that appeared in 1946 finally began to have a substantial impact on human society.
In the Cold War order, the Soviet Union and the United States opened up the electronic information age through electronic and atomic energy technology, dragging human society into the third industrial revolution.
At the same time, Microsoft, which benefited from the personal computer revolution, Apple, which was born in the personal computer era, Google, Amazon, and Facebook in the Internet era, including a number of major Internet companies in China, have risen one after another and continue to this day.
Over the past few decades, both the practitioners involved and the investors who bet on these companies have reaped phenomenal returns.
For example, in 2005, 8 billionaires, 50 multimillionaires and 250 millionaires were created on the day of listingNine years later, Alibaba's IPO gave birth to more than 10,000 multimillionaires.
This is the gift of the times, enough to change the lives of a group of people overnight.
History is not simply repeated, but it always rhymes with similarities.
The recent humanoid robot sector, taking advantage of the breakthrough in artificial intelligence technology, the entry of technology giants and policy dividends, has also seen four valuation restructurings.
In the first stage, in August 2021, Tesla launched the concept map of "Warning Sky Pillar", and Tesla's stock price rose by more than 50% from August to the end of October.
In the second stage, in the second quarter of 2022, the humanoid robot track was established, and a large number of humanoid industry chain-related concept companies rose by 1-3 times, such as green harmonic (reducer), Sanhua Intelligent Control (rotary assembly), Wuzhi Electric (coreless motor), etc.
In the third stage, the large model boom at the beginning of this year has stimulated the market's positive expectations for the accelerated application of humanoid robots, and from January to April, Cambrian, Haitian AAC, iFLYTEK, etc. have accumulated 1-3 times respectively.
Domestic humanoid robot ** interpretation.
Currently, it is at the beginning of the fourth stage.
On November 02, the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology issued the "Guiding Opinions on the Innovation and Development of Humanoid Robots", proposing that by 2025, breakthroughs will be made in key technologies such as "brain, cerebellum, and limbs", and 2-3 ecological enterprises with global influence will be cultivated, and their comprehensive strength will reach the world's advanced level.
This is the first top-level design document on the road to the development of China's humanoid robot industry, and its importance is undoubted.
The day after the policy was introduced, the concept of robots rose, and Wuzhou New Year, Hengfeng Tools, Fengli Intelligence, Green Harmonic, etc., have recorded a 20%-40% increase so far.
The focus of the market has also begun to shift from technology to application.
In the first three stages, many people have seen an obvious explosion of wealth and industrial restructuring effects. A new chapter has begun, and how can we seize the opportunity?
China's humanoid robot policy continues to exert force.
With every great technological change, destruction is accompanied by a new birth. Some people have been swept into the garbage heap of history, while others have ridden the tide of the times and become rich quickly.
Now, we have reached a similar moment in history.
In the first industrial revolution, human beings realized mechanized production;Second, electrification;The third time, automation.
At this moment, the fourth industrial revolution that is about to take place or is taking place is the core feature of "intelligence".
Artificial intelligence is its core driver.
Since the beginning of this year, AI large models have developed rapidly and become the main line of the market, and almost all related sectors have become fragrant and sweet.
Like a high-speed train, in the second half of the year, the large model quickly entered a new stage - from technology to commercialization, Microsoft Pilot for office, Callannie for social networking, and one after another landing applications quickly stood on the wind.
But all of the above is still at the level of information.
The ultimate goal of the scientific and technological revolution is to promote the leap in productivity in the real world.
The development of AI technology will never stop at the involution of large models, but will inevitably soon land in the modern industrial and social production system, which also requires a real-world actuator and universal carrier.
The most ideal carrier of artificial intelligence is humanoid robots. This is also the view expressed by Yao Chizhi, winner of the Turing Award in 2000, academician of the Chinese Academy of Sciences, and dean of the Institute for Interdisciplinary Information Sciences of Tsinghua University, at the 2023 World Robotics Conference.
Zhang Bo, academician of the Chinese Academy of Sciences and honorary dean of the Institute of Artificial Intelligence of Tsinghua University, also believes that with the breakthrough of basic models, general intelligent robots are the future development direction.
Why is humanoid robot the most ideal as a general-purpose robot?
Because whether it is online AI or offline "embodied intelligence", in the final analysis, it is for the purpose of serving people.
And the vast majority of tools and buildings in human society are designed to facilitate the use of human body structures.
Any tool that can be used by humans can be used directly by the robot, and there is no need to design another set of tools or production environment for the robot.
To build a general-purpose robot, a humanoid robot is the most suitable.
So now, whether it is Tesla's Optimus or UBTECH's Walker series, they only use the human body structure.
Focus on the Walker series, which is closer to us.
In addition to the humanoid robot that sounded the listing gong on the Hong Kong Stock Exchange, the large humanoid robot displayed by the China Pavilion of the Dubai World Expo on behalf of Chinese science and technology, the large humanoid robot that entered the NEOM New Future City in Saudi Arabia, and the large humanoid robot that performed at the closing ceremony of the Chengdu Universiade are all UBTECH Walker series products.
In fact, as early as 2016, UBTECH successfully developed a walker prototype and completed the technical exploration of large-scale humanoid robots
In January 2018, the first generation of the Walker robot was released, achieving a breakthrough in the walking ability of China's bipedal robots
In January 2019, the second-generation Walker robot was released, which increased the human-computer interaction capability
In July 2021, the third-generation Walker X was released, which achieved faster and more stable movement capabilities, lighter and safer interactions, and improved AI capabilities, making it smarter and more friendly
In 2023, an industrial version of the humanoid robot Walker S will be developed.
Since its establishment in 2012, UBTECH has always focused on the research and development of core technologies of humanoid robots, and has laid out full-stack core technologies such as robot motion planning and control, servo drives, computer vision and voice interaction, SLAM and autonomous navigation technology, visual servo operation and human-computer interaction, and ROSA, the application framework of robot operating system, with more than 1,800 related patents, and is the enterprise with the largest number of effective patents for humanoid robots in the world.
While deeply cultivating the core technology, UBTECH, as one of the very few market participants in the global humanoid robot industry, also took the lead in realizing the commercialization of humanoid robots.
Although the adaptability to the human environment and tools has reduced the difficulty of commercial humanoid robots.
But even so, the bar is still very high.
On January 9, 2007, Steve Jobs officially released the first truly intelligent iPhone in human history, opening a new chapter for human smartphones, which have since entered thousands of households and accelerated the arrival of the mobile Internet era.
At that moment, also known as the "iPhone moment", it was used to represent the revolutionary impact of an innovative technology on humanity.
At this moment, as Nvidia founder Jensen Huang shouted to the world that "AI's iPhone moment is coming", the humanoid robot industry has also ushered in a very critical moment.
However, among all technology products, humanoid robots are the culmination of cutting-edge technologies, resulting in technology companies that really dare to gnaw on this "hard bone" like UBTECH, which are very scarce in the world.
The main reason is that in order for the humanoid robot industry to move forward, it must first cross the "three mountains", namely:It is technically difficult, expensive to manufacture, and difficult to commercialize.
These three problems make up the classic "triangular loop" model: to meet the demanding requirements of dealing with extremely complex scenarios, the high cost of integrating a large number of advanced technologies and hardware devices under the current conditions, and the high cost of repelling most of the demand, makes it difficult to start large-scale production to reduce costs.
At present, among the humanoid robot companies that have begun to produce products in the world, almost without exception are in a state of burning money and losing money. Many companies are struggling to persist in the bright future of robots, while constantly innovating and iterating better products, while trying to reduce costs as much as possible and find commercialization scenarios.
So far, the development of humanoid robots has gone through 4 stages:
The slow static walking phase from 1969 to 1995, represented by the humanoid robot wabot at Waseda University in Japan;
The continuous dynamic walking phase from 1996 to 2015, represented by the humanoid robot ASIMO of Honda of Japan;
The phase of highly dynamic motion performance from 2016 to 2020, represented by the Boston Dynamics humanoid robot Atlas;
Since 2021, the initial commercialization stage has been represented by humanoid robots such as Digit from Amazon in the United States, Walker from UBTECH in China, and Opitimus from Tesla in the United States.
It is not until the fourth stage that Chinese companies have their place.
Humanoid robot technology was originally developed in the United States, Japan and other places, but in the past 10 years, China has gone from lagging behind, to following, and then to leading.
China ranks first in the world in terms of the number of patents on humanoid robot technology. As of May 31, 2023, China ranks first in the world in terms of the number of patent applications for humanoid robots (6,618) and the number of valid patents (3,110).
UBTECH, a Chinese humanoid robot company, ranks among the top in the world in core technology dimensions such as core components (reducer, motor, encoder), drive control (energy system, power system, motion control) and body structure (head, shoulder and neck, arm, lower limbs, chest and abdomen, joints, and other structures).
In addition, in terms of servo drives, UBTECH is also one of the few companies in the world that can realize the mass production and actual product application of multi-series servo drives, and it is also one of the few companies that has completed the process from small torque to large torque (0.).2nm to 200nm) is one of the companies in mass production of servo drives.
In the past half century, the development of humanoid robots has transitioned from a long period of technical verification to a commercial testing period with the blessing of AI.
With the emergence of multi-modal large models, current AI technologies can better learn, train and evolve robots from various aspects such as speech, visual perception, decision-making, and control.
In some training programs, the effect of these empowerments has been very significant. For example, the immobile AMECA robot, after the integration of GPT4, has achieved great progress in real-time interaction with humans, recognition of human movements and control of its own facial expressions, and has become more "human-like".
As a result, the application scenarios of humanoid robots will be greatly expanded.
For example, in offices, museums, restaurants, schools, and home education, robots will be in greater demand because they become more intelligent and agile.
On top of this, if the movement control of the feet and hands can be better adapted to the human environment, and at the same time, the manufacturing cost will be reduced to a lower level.
At that time, the beautiful scene of "reducing the cost of humanoid robots to close to the cost of a medium-sized car and letting it really go to the family" may not be far away.
UBTECH's large humanoid robot Walkers
On October 20, China's first humanoid robot innovation center was established in Beijing, and it is planned to carry out five key tasks such as the prototype of the general humanoid robot ontology and the general large model of the humanoid robot, which is jointly held by Beijing Xiaomi Robot Technology, Beijing UBTECH Intelligent Robot, Beijing Jingcheng Electromechanical Industry Investment.
The "national team" of humanoid robots is about to emerge, and related companies are also expected to get more development opportunities.
Compared with other peers, UBTECH, as a representative of Chinese humanoid robots, has clearly successfully achieved effective breakthroughs.
From October 2021 to March 2022, UBTECH's humanoid robot served at the China Pavilion of the Dubai World Expo for 6 months, setting a record for the first large-scale humanoid robot in human history to be truly commercialized.
In 2022, UBTECH's first batch of Walker X robots will be exported to NEOM New Future City in Saudi Arabia, which will serve as the first generation of large-scale humanoid robot "citizens" to provide robot intelligent services for NEOM residents.
In June this year, UBTECH and Meidi Elderly Care Service (Shanghai), a Chinese subsidiary of Japan's No. 1 brand of dementia care "Meidi", announced the official joint venture of Youdi Health Technology (Shenzhen)**, which combines AI and robotics technology to empower the health care industry to jointly create the world's top health care service robots and solutions to serve the global market, including China and Japan.
In addition, UBTECH has phased successful experience in the field of education and logistics, and has made more attempts in the field of scene landing.
This is a major opportunity for humanoid robots to open up another rigid market.
Humanoid robots are in the ascendant, as a super track of at least 10 trillion level, at this moment when the application side accelerates the landing, which country, which capital market, which enterprise and even which investor can take the lead in seizing this historic opportunity that is difficult to reproduce
On the eve of change, the world is stepping up hard technology, and everyone is seizing the opportunity.
There is no doubt about the future imagination of humanoid robots. However, at present, in the capital market, relevant targets are extremely scarce.
At this time, it is the right time for UBTECH, the "first share of humanoid robots", to be listed on the Hong Kong Stock Exchange.
The arrival of UBTECH is likely to become a milestone in Hong Kong's support for the listing of "hard technology" and specialized technology companies.
On the one hand, it will help establish Hong Kong as a new highland for global hard tech companies to be listed.
On the other hand, is it also a great opportunity for all those who aspire to ride the new era train to lay out in advance?
Looking back at the scripts of the first three scientific and technological revolutions, I believe everyone has the answer in their hearts.