New Delhi: Last week a Chinese humanoid robot, TianGong Ultra, ran the distance of 100 metres in 8.64 seconds, leaving the world in awe of the new robot. This is nearly a second quicker than Usain Bolt’s fabled world record. In the meantime, the robot team is up for a big challenge making the robot functional for regular work.
But the victory in the race was just the start, said Jack Guo, 34, the engineer who leads the development of the robot. The actual challenge now, he said, is to “shift from high performance to high reliability, high usability.
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Guo is employed at the Beijing Humanoid Robot Innovation Centre or “X-Humanoid”. The team also designed and constructed a miniature robot named Omni, which was used in 400m races in the recent World Humanoid Robot Games. It was not an easy task to win these races. Engineers were working around the clock to fix and test the robots between the match to ensure their smooth running.
X-Humanoid was set up in November 2023. It receives financial backing from government and private investors as well as the robotics company, UBTech, and tech giants Xiaomi and Baidu. The center is not just about creating robots; it’s also about fostering innovation. It also develops hardware, motion control software, and artificial intelligence devices for other companies in the robotics industry.
The firm has not broken down the number of robots sold as yet. Its robots, however, are being tested by universities, research institutes and companies that are keen to use them for actual industrial applications. There’s a factory in Beijing, run by Foton Cummins, where the robot has tested itself using basic tasks, such as moving boxes.
This reflects a larger scope of Chinese robotics industry. Posting to the Internet, and then winning the public eye in activities such as races, is no longer the way to get attention; companies are now spending time to test their robots in real, practical tasks in the workplace.
