Zhang Yu

JeniZhang13@163.com

SHENZHEN robotics company UBTECH Robotics announced yesterday a strategic cooperation plan with Chinese tech giant Baidu to jointly explore the innovative fusion of artificial intelligence (AI) large language models and humanoid robots.

According to the cooperation plan, Walker S, a humanoid robot developed by UBTECH, will be able to access Baidu’s generative AI product ERNIE Bot (also known as Wenxin Yiyan) through the Qianfan AppBuilder, an AI-native app development platform from Baidu AI Cloud, to carry out task scheduling application development and quickly build task planning and execution capabilities.

In a video released by UBTECH, Walker S successfully completed tasks such as folding clothes and sorting interference objects with its robotic arms and dexterous hands.

When doing tasks, Walker S relies on an end-side multi-modal perception model to obtain spatial positioning and semantic information. The robot then sends the information to ERNIE Bot for task interpretation and planning.

Industry insiders said that the integration of a humanoid robot and an AI large language model represents a leading position in both innovation and difficulty in the industry globally. In addition to the existing multi-modal perception and motion control capabilities, humanoid robots are able to obtain advanced intention understanding and fine-grained task planning abilities by accessing the AI large model.

In February of this year, UBTECH released another video of Walker S at Chinese new energy vehicle maker NIO’s assembly line, where it carried out quality inspections of headlight covers, door locks, and seat belts.

Baidu’s ERNIE Bot had accumulated more than 100 million users as of the end of last year, according to the tech company.