The first robot made by Huawei's talented young man is thoughtful, amazing and exciting

"Mega Man is one of my favorite games when I was a kid. It tells a story about a future world where technology is highly developed, robots have developed intelligence, and robots have appeared to assist humans in their work. The grand narrative is about humans and robots helping and killing each other, evolution and war, love and sacrifice."

Everyone is enlightened by certain things when they are young and fantasizes about what they want to become when they grow up. Perhaps the author of Mega Man did not expect that several years later a "Wild Iron Man" would have the dream of becoming a robot precisely from his game.

This "Wild Iron Man" brought his out-of-the-box work today. The "something big press conference" that was secretly revealed four months ago kicked off today. The Zhiyuan Yuanzheng A1 universal embodied intelligent robot was officially unveiled, and brought a series of small surprises and easter eggs.

First meeting with Yuanzheng A1

Zhiyuan is a very interesting name, which means an intelligent humanoid robot. "Zhi" represents artificial intelligence, and "yuan" is the pictograph of human legs.

The original intention of establishing Zhiyuan is to create robots that are as flexible and intelligent as humans. For Zhiyuan, the goal they want to achieve is to closely integrate advanced robots and AI technologies with human life and production manufacturing, and make robots a powerful assistant to humans.

Zhihuijun said that the ultimate mission of Zhiyuan Robotics is to make intelligent robots the source of productivity and to create unlimited productivity. He also believes that through the team's continued efforts and innovations in the future, the entire human society will be driven into a more intelligent, efficient and sustainable future.

Yuanzheng A1 is the first general-purpose embodied intelligent robot of Zhiyuan Robotics. This robot integrates various advanced ontology, control, perception, cognition and decision-making intelligent technologies, and is based on a series of innovative technologies such as the very cutting-edge large language model in the AI ​​field and the self-developed visual control model. It will have excellent intelligent interaction and intelligent task execution capabilities, and in the future it will be able to autonomously complete movement and operation tasks in various complex scenarios.

Touching little details, bright little surprises

When I first saw the Yuanzheng A1 in the video, I always felt that it was a little different from the humanoid robots of other manufacturers. This is exactly the careful attention that Zhihui put into its detailed design.

Usually, manufacturers design the robot's knees to bend forward like ours, but the Expedition A1 has a reverse joint design, with the knees bending backwards. It is this thoughtful little detail that makes the Zhiyuan robot stand out.

Zhihuijun explained: "We designed this robot with the original intention of applying it to various real tasks. In other words, we hope that it can work, rather than simply imitate humans for the sake of imitating humans. Our human muscles actually have a very high degree of freedom, but there are many robots now, so they may not have such a high degree of redundancy due to various technical maturity factors, including cost factors. In the case that robots do not currently have the same high degree of redundancy of joints as humans, the anti-joint design can help them have a larger operating space."

The expedition robot not only has small details, but also small surprises. In addition to the different layout of the feet, the Zhiyuan robot's hands are also innovative.

The new dexterous hand will be equipped with vision-based fingertip sensors , which also comes from the robot's task requirements. If the robot is to be used for precision operations, the robot's hand must have a stronger perception ability so that the robot can clearly know the degree of completion of the task.

The surprising thing is that, with 12 active degrees of freedom and 5 passive degrees of freedom, its cost price is less than 10,000 RMB, making it one of the most cost-effective components in the entire robot.

Modular design is also the focus of this expedition robot. Taking into account the diversity of tasks that robots will perform in the future, the entire expedition robot adopts a modular design. Not only can the chassis be replaced with a wheeled one, but the robot can also disassemble its dexterous hands and replace them with other special-purpose tools, such as a screwdriver.

Modular design brings more possibilities to humanoid robots. Humanoid is a universal intelligent form, but when it is necessary to switch to a special mode, the expedition robot can quickly complete the "transformation", breaking the limitations of previous humanoid robots.

The Easter Eggs That Come

I remember that in the video that Zhihui posted on Bilibili on April 1, a Nezha robot that combined cyber machinery and Chinese mythology made everyone think about it. Zhihui said in the video that if nothing unexpected happened, it would appear as an Easter egg in "a certain big event press conference". As a result...

The Easter egg is on April 1st, Happy April Fools' Day!

Hun Tian Ling and Hot Wheels did not arrive at the press conference as scheduled, but in half a year they built an Expedition A1 from scratch to attend the press conference, and found various thoughtful designs on the robot, which is undoubtedly a more hidden easter egg.

Standing on the edge of the bright moon, not inferior to the starlight, is Zhihui's perseverance in pursuing the integration of AI and robots; a long journey begins with a single step, which is the profound footprints left by Zhiyuan Robotics and a group of robot dreamers in promoting the development of robots.