What innovations has Mobvoi brought about by launching five products in succession?

On May 24, artificial intelligence technology company Mobvoi released five products at its 2018 Strategic New Product Launch Conference.

Specifically, it includes the flagship series of smart watches TicWatch Pro, the children's version of Xiaowen speaker TicKasa Fox, the fashionable version of Xiaowen speaker TicKasa Nano, and the Xiaowen smart single-ear headset TicPod Solo. At the same time, facing the enterprise market, Mobvoi released the AI ​​voice chip module "Wenxin", claiming that it is the first mass-produced AI voice chip module in China.

When asked "Which of the five new products do you like best?", Li Zhifei told Leifeng.com that if he had to choose, he would like smart watches best because they represent a huge technological innovation.

Li Zhifei said that TicWatch Pro, the flagship series of smart watches from Mobvoi, should have been released at this time last year. It has been prepared for a long time and contains many complex innovations, including dual CPUs, dual operating systems, and dual screens that can be switched freely, truly solving the most painful points in the smart watch industry.

According to Leiphone.com, the flagship watch TicWatch Pro released by TicWatch this time adopts the design style of a classic mechanical sports watch and a pure round double-layer persistent screen. It is equipped with the Qualcomm® Snapdragon™ Wear 2100 platform and uses the Wear OS by Google Chinese version operating system. It has a built-in TicWatch VPA assistant, supports dual-standard mobile and Unicom systems, supports eSIM one-number dual-terminal services, and mobile phones share the same number (4G version only), supports NFC bus and subway card swiping, UnionPay payment, and will also support VISA payment in the future. It is a well-deserved flagship smartwatch.

The TicWatch Pro has a diameter of 45mm, a thickness of 12.6mm, and a weight of 58.5g. It uses the same pure round dial design as the TicWatch series of smart watches. It is equipped with a 1.4-inch ultra-large pure round wide color gamut AMOLED screen, with a screen-to-body ratio of up to 61.5%; in addition, it has a high-definition resolution of 400*400 pixels.

In terms of the strap, TicWatch Pro adopts a "genuine leather + silicone" hybrid design. The outer layer is made of carefully selected imported cowhide from Italy, and the inner layer is made of skin-friendly silicone. The two materials are combined and matched with a sweat guide groove design.

Waterproof is another feature of TicWatch Pro, supporting high-standard IP 68 level dust and water resistance.

"China's first mass-produced AI voice interaction chip" is another highlight of this conference. However, Li Zhifei emphasized many times during the demonstration and interview that this chip was developed by Guoxin, and Mobvoi only provides voice interaction capabilities. At the same time, it launched a one-stop voice solution combining software and hardware - Mobvoi A1.

In response to the question "Why do you want to make chips?", Li Zhifei told Leifeng.com that it is mainly to meet demand. For example, in the smart TV industry, in the so-called AI or intelligentization this year, far-field voice interaction is a strong demand, but there is currently no good solution on the market. For example, the iFlytek 4-microphone module costs 180 yuan, which is expensive, and the effect is not that good, and it is not that convenient to integrate.

The AI ​​chip module released by Mobvoi this time can be directly used via USB and can be woken up offline.

Li Zhifei said that the previous DSB-based solution was difficult to achieve cold start, that is, the TV could not be woken up when it was turned off, which was actually a strong demand. Otherwise, when the TV was turned off, it could not be woken up by voice, so what was the use of voice interaction?

In addition, Guoxin itself has a low-power, neural network processor NPU, which can achieve offline wake-up. Based on this, various signal processing in NPU are integrated, including simple definition of wake-up, so as to realize the AI ​​of smart TV.

Finally, Li Zhifei emphasized that we did not do this just because others did it. Wenwen started the relevant work last year, with the first purpose of meeting market demand and the second of generating revenue for the company.

According to Leifeng.com, the development of this AI chip module took two years from chip to module. As a partner, Hangzhou Guoxin Technology established the AI ​​chip project in May 2016 - AI chip GX8010 & GX8008. Aiming at the characteristics of artificial intelligence and the Internet of Things, it adopts a multi-core heterogeneous design including the latest technologies such as NPU and DSP, deeply integrates algorithms, software and hardware, and endows various IoT devices with low power consumption and strong offline AI capabilities.

• In April 2017, the chip was successfully taped out;

• In October 2017, the first AI chip with integrated NPU was released;

• In October, Mobvoi and Hangzhou Guoxin Technology jointly launched the AI ​​voice chip module "Wenxin" project;

• In May 2018, the AI ​​voice chip module "Wenxin" was officially put into mass production, becoming China's first mass-produced AI voice chip module

In terms of specific cooperation methods, Mobvoi provides voice interaction technology, including microphone array signal processing technology, voice interaction SDK and customizable semantic skills, including echo cancellation, sound source localization, beamforming, voice noise reduction, voice wake-up, voice recognition, semantic understanding and voice synthesis and other proprietary AI voice interaction core technologies;

The AI ​​chip developed by Hangzhou Guoxin Technology includes a digital signal processor DSP, a neural network processor NPU, and standard interfaces such as USB/IIS/IIC/UART. The combination of software and hardware "Wenxin" can provide AI voice interaction solutions for core application scenarios such as smart TVs, set-top boxes and robots.

What exactly is the AI ​​new retail solution?

Li Zhifei said that when Mobvoi develops AI new retail solutions, it is more about the market from the user's perspective. Mobvoi already has many stores, including self-operated and franchised stores, so it looks at the problem more from the perspective of the application side and the customer.

Secondly, visual technology is not Wenwen's own advantage, so it mainly cooperates with partners to use their solutions to help Wenwen make basic visual layout and open up business. Therefore, the AI ​​new retail solution is more of an attempt by Wenwen in offline stores rather than its main business, and it is not currently provided to third parties, so it cannot be considered a 2B business.

Li Zhifei told Leifeng.com that consumers previously knew about Mobvoi more through online channels, including various e-commerce websites and Mobvoi’s own official website. What was particularly important was whether the product could be physically seen and tried offline, which is why Mobvoi is also making many offline attempts.

As of now, Mobvoi has opened four offline experience stores. By integrating more and more with the physical world, we have found that the physical world is becoming more and more complex. This is also a particularly important way for AI consumer electronics to reach consumers.

This year, Li Zhifei predicts that Wenwen will open 20 more experience stores across the country, including 10 cities in Beijing, Tianjin, Shanghai, Chengdu, Chongqing, Wuhan, Shenzhen, and Hong Kong. Li Zhifei hopes to do something different through technology - for example, to do something different in retail through AI technology, and to replicate the behavior of e-commerce offline. For example, through sensors, crowd analysis, customer analysis, personality analysis, including purchase analysis, sales will be more humane and intelligent.