relations between the two countries<\/a>. And while the US still has the lead on frontier research, owing in part to Washington\u2019s restrictions on the export of cutting-edge chips to China, Beijing is going all-in on real life applications, such as robotics.<\/p>\nSeveral cities, including Beijing and Shanghai, have established 10bn yuan (\u00a31bn) robotics industry funds. In January, the state-owned Bank of China announced plans for a 1tn yuan of financial support to the AI industry over the next five years.<\/p>\n
\u201cIf there is an area where [Beijing] thinks that China is ahead, or could be positioned as a world leader, then they really want to draw attention to that area,\u201d said Dr Kyle Chan, a researcher at Princeton University.<\/p>\n
A robot is carried off after a kickboxing match on the first day of the games. Photograph: China News Service\/Getty Images<\/p>\n
There is something strangely ominous about seeing jerky, human-like robots with two arms, two legs, and blank heads being dragged out of the ring to be recharged by their human handlers.<\/p>\n
When it comes to humanoids, the Chinese industry has many advantages. Although US companies such as Tesla and Boston Dynamics are still seen as the overall market leaders, several Chinese firms such as UBTech and Unitree Robotics \u2013 which supplied the boxing robots in Friday\u2019s games \u2013 are catching up.<\/p>\n
Tesla relies on China for many of the parts needed to build the company\u2019s physical humanoids. The US investment bank Morgan Stanley estimates that China-based supply chains produce robots at a third of the cost of non-China suppliers. \u201cIt appears to be very difficult to entirely decouple from China in this space,\u201d wrote Sheng Zhong, the bank\u2019s head of China industrials research, in a recent note.<\/p>\n
A robot built by the Chinese company Unitree Robotics plays a traditional drum. Photograph: Tingshu Wang\/Reuters<\/p>\n
As well as generating positive publicity on social media, China views humanoids as being part of the solution to the problems created by the country\u2019s ageing population and shrinking workforce. A recent article in People\u2019s Daily, a mouthpiece of the Chinese Communist party, said robots could offer practical and emotional support for older people. \u201cThe vision of robot-assisted elderly care is not far away,\u201d it said. Humanoid robots could also take the place of employees on factory lines as China tries to retrain and redeploy its workforce into more hi-tech jobs.<\/p>\n
But for all the hype, there is a big gap between humanoids stumbling over footballs and reliably handling daily tasks. Safely interacting with vulnerable humans would be another leap. \u201cThe home is probably one of the last places you\u2019ll ever find a humanoid robot because of safety,\u201d said Chan. \u201cMy general view on the whole humanoid explosion \u2026 is honestly a bit of scepticism.\u201d<\/p>\n
A technician works on humanoid robots on the sidelines of the games. Photograph: Kevin Frayer\/Getty Images<\/p>\n
Two of the biggest barriers to the technology being useful outside of PR stunts are the complexity of the human-built environment and the hands needed to navigate it.<\/p>\n
While other forms of AI, such as large language models, can be trained using reams of digital data, there are much smaller datasets available for training an algorithm on how to walk through crowded restaurants or up and down flights of stairs. Although China\u2019s efforts to get robots out into the real world can help companies to harvest more data, it is still a big bottleneck in the industry, Chan said.<\/p>\n
Dr Jonathan Aitken, a robotics teacher at the University of Sheffield, agreed. \u201cThe state of AI is nowhere near seeing humanoids operating out of uncontrolled environments,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n
And while robots jumping and kicking looks impressive, mundane daily tasks such as handling a kitchen knife or folding laundry requires dexterous hands, a skill technology companies have yet to crack. A human hand has about 27 \u201cdegrees of freedom\u201d \u2013 ie, independent movements through space. Tesla\u2019s Optimus humanoid, one of the most advanced models on the market, has 22.<\/p>\n
Still, China has beat the odds before when it comes to turbocharged advances. Just 10 years ago, the country exported fewer than 375,000 cars a year. Now China is the world\u2019s biggest automobile supplier, shipping nearly 6m vehicles annually. The European Union has increased tariffs on Chinese-built electric vehicles in an attempt to stem the flow.<\/p>\n
In China, the political and public will is firmly behind the humanoids. Zhan Guangtao came to the humanoid games with her two daughters on Friday, after her elder child\u2019s school gave them free tickets. \u201cIt\u2019s good to have my children in touch with the world\u2019s most advanced robotics,\u201d Zhan said. \u201cExposing them to hi-tech will broaden their horizons.\u201d<\/p>\n
Additional research by Lillian Yang<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"A quick left hook, a front kick to the chest, a few criss-cross jabs, and the crowd cheers.…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":73832,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[20],"tags":[256,254,255,64,63,105],"class_list":{"0":"post-73831","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-artificial-intelligence","8":"tag-ai","9":"tag-artificial-intelligence","10":"tag-artificialintelligence","11":"tag-au","12":"tag-australia","13":"tag-technology"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/73831","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=73831"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/73831\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/73832"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=73831"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=73831"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=73831"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}