Robots sorting parcels and serving fried chicken enthralled visitors at a robotics expo in Beijing, where hundreds of companies set out their pitches for a future labour market transformed by artificial intelligence.
The Chinese government has embraced robotics as a strategic industry, and local firms have ploughed resources into the development of embodied AI.
The results of that investment were very much in evidence on the first day of the World Robot Conference on Wednesday, as thousands of Chinese and foreign visitors weaved through demonstrations of robots in houses, shops and factories.
At one booth, visitors pointed their phones at a humanoid wearing an apron as it gingerly reached for a toy chicken drumstick before clamping down and lifting the fake meat into a bucket.
Hundreds of robotics startups, some just a couple years old, peppered the sprawling convention centre hoping to dazzle.
“You can see the improvements every year,” said Soumodip Sarkar, the executive president of a science park in Portugal who was visiting the expo on a tour of factories in China.
“This is a space I see that China is already dominating and is going to dominate.”
Particularly impressive were improvements in robotic hands, Sarkar said, wiggling his fingers.
For instance, robots that last year could not pick up fruit now do so – an important breakthrough as “we have a big need for agricultural applications”, he said.
At the Unitree booth, a robot made a sandwich with two slices of bread and a single piece of lettuce, pinching the leaf to assemble it.
Kang Yu, an investor, said the applications of embodied AI have become more obvious, pointing to robots making noodles or acting as emotional companions.
But the industry is still “full of challenges”, Kang said.
For example, “when there’s poor Internet connection, response time will be very slow”.
There are geopolitical obstacles too: Washington has blacklisted Unitree and dozens of other Chinese tech firms it says are aiding the military.
But change is in the air, said Yang Qian, the COO of X Square Robot, which produces robots for use in homes and logistics.
Many foreign customers, including from the United States, “often come to our company for research”, she said as robotic arms pushed packages along a conveyor belt in the booth behind her.
“So I think everyone’s view of China’s overall technological ecology is changing.” — AFP
