Industry News|Optimus Robot Production Costs Estimated Between $20,000 and $30,000

Recently, Zheng Yu, the head of control at Tencent Robotics X, officially left the company and joined UBTECH Research Institute as Deputy Director and Humanoid Robot Scientist. He will lead the biped humanoid robot team to promote UBTECH’s technological research and development in this field.

On the morning of October 11, Tesla held a “WE, ROBOT” launch event where CEO Elon Musk announced significant progress in the Optimus robot. The Optimus robot is expected to achieve large-scale production in the future, with anticipated costs between $20,000 and $30,000, and it is expected to be widely applied in households and other service areas.

On October 11, ByteDance Research Institute officially released the second-generation robot model GR-2. The research team stated that the GR-2’s pre-training dataset includes 38 million video clips covering diverse scenes such as home, outdoor, workplace, and leisure, aiming to enhance the robot’s performance in multiple scenarios.

On October 10, the American Automation Advancement Association released new data showing a continuous decline in factory robot orders in North America. The order volume dropped nearly one-third compared to the previous year, and the trend of contraction continued in the first half of this year, indicating a weakening demand for automation in North American manufacturing.

On October 10, the Qingdao Municipal Bureau of Industry and Information Technology, in conjunction with multiple departments, released the “Qingdao Humanoid Robot Industry Development Action Plan (2024–2027).” The plan aims to make Qingdao a leading domestic base for humanoid robot research and manufacturing, with the goal of cultivating 5 to 8 leading enterprises and achieving a series of innovative results in key areas such as smart sensors and reducers by 2027.

On October 10, Amazon announced it is piloting mini-robotic warehouses in its Whole Foods supermarkets to improve logistics efficiency and attract more customers to cope with the increasingly competitive retail market.

On October 9, the Agricultural and Rural Affairs Department’s apple full-mechanization research base collaborated with Northwest A&F University to develop a dual-arm harvesting robot, which completed its first on-site test in an apple orchard in Tianshui, Gansu. This robot successfully performed apple-picking tasks, demonstrating its potential for mechanization in agriculture.

On October 9, Leju Company released its latest research version humanoid robot KUAVO (Kua Fu). This robot features 30 degrees of freedom, equipped with dual stereo depth cameras and optional LiDAR, making it suitable for research and educational applications.

On September 25, Gree Intelligent Equipment and Universal Robots officially signed a strategic cooperation agreement in Zhuhai. The two parties will combine their advantages to jointly enhance the performance and application levels of collaborative robots and promote the development and application of intelligent manufacturing technology.

On October 10, the Beijing Embodied Intelligent Robot Innovation Center was officially upgraded to the “National and Local Co-built Embodied Intelligent Robot Innovation Center.” Following the upgrade, the center will focus on solving common industry issues, promoting the standardization of the embodied intelligence industry, and efficiently integrating the innovation chain to facilitate the implementation and application of embodied intelligent robot products.

On October 9, Demis Hassabis and John Jumper from the UK’s DeepMind were awarded the 2024 Nobel Prize in Chemistry. On the same day, Geoffrey Hinton from the University of Toronto in Canada received the Nobel Prize in Physics. These two Nobel Prizes recognize deep learning and AI model technologies, highlighting the significant impact of AI in the scientific field.