Annual salary is as high as 2.68 million! Embodied intelligence is coming, maybe you can learn about these directions of robots

The stressful college entrance examination is over. On this occasion, I wish all the candidates success in admission to their favorite schools!

In addition to choosing a favorite school, the right major is also the focus of recent candidates and parents. In recent years, the domestic robot market has grown steadily, and the explosive AI will further empower robots in the future, making the robot industry also regarded as a future star by many industry insiders, and at the same time has become the direction chosen by many parents and students.

If you are interested in the robotics industry, this article will help you break down the sub-sectors within the industry, find the direction that interests you most, and work together to contribute your youthful efforts to the robotics industry in China and even the world.

The concept of embodied intelligence is gaining popularity, triggering the next wave of artificial intelligence

Since May this year, driven by the two giants Tesla and Nvidia, a new concept - the concept of embodied intelligence has been instantly ignited, and major technology companies have entered the market one after another.

What is an embodied intelligent robot ? An embodied intelligent robot can first understand human language, then decompose tasks, plan subtasks, identify objects while moving, interact with the environment, and finally complete the corresponding tasks. In short, it is a smart AI brain + a flexible body, that is, an embodied intelligent robot.

At present, Microsoft, Google, Alibaba and others have announced their respective development plans and project prototypes.

Microsoft is planning to expand the capabilities of ChatGPT to the field of robotics, enabling robots to be controlled by language and text. It is understood that the current experiment has been able to control the robot to find "healthy drinks", "things with sugar and red signs" (in this case, a can of Coke) and a mirror for drone selfies in the room by inputting instructions into the ChatGPT dialog box.

Google has launched the multimodal embodied visual language model PaLM-E, which can not only understand images, but also understand and generate language. PaLM-E can complete embodied reasoning tasks, that is, allowing robots to complete tasks that require common sense and logical reasoning in virtual or real environments through multimodal input (such as language, vision, touch, and the robot's 3D spatial state information, etc.) without retraining.

Alibaba takes a similar path to Microsoft. A demonstration video released by Alibaba Cloud shows a scenario like this: an engineer tells the robot "I'm thirsty" through the DingTalk dialog box. After understanding the content of the instruction, the Qianwen model automatically writes a set of codes in the background and sends it to the robot. The robot then identifies a bottle of water from the surrounding environment, and automatically completes a series of actions such as moving, grabbing, and delivering, and successfully delivers it to the engineer.

Embodied intelligence has led to two academic directions: one is the AI ​​model responsible for the smart brain, and the other is the design of components responsible for the flexible body.

AI talents are in high demand, with annual salaries as high as 2.68 million

Taking the most popular ChatGPT as an example, it is different from intelligent voice assistants such as Siri. It does not directly use search engines to retrieve questions and select answers from the retrieved answers. It is a language model. Its principle is to use deep learning technology and neural network models to learn language patterns in order to generate and understand natural language.

AI talents usually come from computer science and science and technology majors in computer science departments, which is what we often call programmer majors. According to the information released by OpenAI when ChatGPT-4 was released, many Chinese people in the OpenAI think tank came from top domestic universities such as Tsinghua University, Peking University, Fudan University and Jiaotong University. Most of the graduates from overseas universities are from computer engineering majors of first-class schools such as Harvard, Stanford and MIT, and the proportion of PhDs is very high.

In terms of salary, due to the surge in global demand for AI talent, the salaries for AI-related positions are also generous enough. For example, OpenAI, the parent company of ChatGPT, offers experienced AI training specialists an annual salary ranging from US$200,000 to US$370,000 (currently about RMB 1.45 million to 2.68 million), and even provides generous benefits such as equity dividends, 29 weeks of paid parental leave, family insurance, and unlimited vacation.

In the United States, the average salary for master's degree graduates working in AI-related positions is between US$100,000 and US$150,000, and the annual salary for some positions is even close to US$400,000. According to USA Today, faced with a huge talent gap, more and more American technology companies are trying to use generous salaries and benefits to compete for limited talent, thereby gaining an advantage in the competition in the AI ​​field.

On June 14, consulting firm McKinsey released a research report titled "The Economic Potential of Generative Artificial Intelligence". In the report, analysts conducted research on 850 occupations in 47 countries and regions (more than 80% of the world's working population). The report pointed out that the time for AI to replace human jobs has been significantly advanced by 10 years. Between 2030 and 2060 (midpoint is 2045), 50% of occupations will be gradually replaced by AI.

Humanoid robots kick off industrialization, and parts and components usher in development opportunities

In the 2023 mid-year research report released by BOC Securities, it was mentioned that the market size of humanoid robots is expected to reach 152 billion US dollars in 2035, and the potential market space for the value of the humanoid robot industry chain is relatively broad.

Compared with industrial robots, humanoid robots have a more complex structure, and industrialization has spawned the demand for motion modules. Humanoid robots have as many as 25-50 joints, higher degrees of freedom, and a variety of parts and components, with a large amount of components, and the cost accounts for up to 50% of the entire machine.

Taking the Tesla Optimus Prime robot as an example, it has a total of 40 drives in its body, including 28 drives in the torso and limbs, and 12 drives in the hands. The total cost of the joints is about 410,000 yuan.

In the movement of robots, core components such as reducers and servo motors are key and account for more than 70% of the cost price.

Rotary drives usually use a harmonic reducer with an internal clutch and are driven by a permanent magnet torque motor; linear drives use an internal rotating screw structure, which uses a permanent magnet torque motor to drive the screw to rotate and push the actuator, converting rotational motion into linear motion.

The industrialization of humanoid robots will generate a large demand for motion drive modules, and the core components that may be involved include harmonic reducers, motors, ball screws, sensors , etc.

In the manufacturing of core parts, according to relevant statistics, the Chinese ball screw market will be about 2.8 billion yuan in 2022, and the global market will be about 13 billion yuan; the harmonic reducer market will be 2.7 billion yuan, and the trend of domestic substitution is obvious. The expanding market will also bring more jobs.

According to data from major recruitment websites, engaging in the research and development of core components usually requires a background in automation disciplines, such as mechanical design and manufacturing and its automation, mechatronics, and other majors. In terms of employment salaries, leading domestic companies such as Han's Precision and Green Harmonic are recruiting engineers with more than two years of development experience with a monthly salary of between 12,000 and 20,000 yuan, which is nearly 50% higher than the average salary of 8,720 yuan for fresh graduates in 2021.