BYD makes its first bet on the humanoid robot track and invests 2 million in Zhihuijun

BYD rushes into the humanoid race! Just in the past two days, BYD invested in a humanoid robot company. This company is Zhiyuan Robotics, which just held a press conference not long ago. It was founded by B Station Wild Iron Man and genius boy Zhihuijun.

Before this investment was made public, Zhiyuan Robot's Expedition A1 really amazed everyone. Like Baidu, BYD also invested in the humanoid robot track for the first time, and also invested in Zhihuijun's Zhiyuan Robot. So, why did BYD invest in a humanoid robot company? BYD bets on the humanoid robot track. Let's first take a look at BYD's investment situation. BYD invested in Shanghai Zhiyuan Xinchuang Technology Co., Ltd., to which Zhiyuan Robot belongs, with a subscribed capital of 1.91497 million and a shareholding ratio of nearly 3.76%. This investment also allowed BYD to surpass BV Baidu Ventures under Robin Li and become the 7th largest shareholder of Zhiyuan Robot.

△Image source: Qichacha In addition to BYD, BlueRun Ventures, Wofu Ventures, Qiyu Investment and others are also new shareholders. After August 21, the company's registered capital increased from 48.470226 million to 50.97376 million. Zhiyuan Robotics was established in February this year. This round of financing, including BYD, is the A++ round. When the A+ round of financing was completed, it was revealed that the valuation was around US$1 billion.

In addition to being one of the co-founders, Zhihuijun (Peng Zhihui) also serves as CTO and chief architect, and now has the added role of director.

So, how exactly will Zhiyuan Robotics "link" with cars? At the launch of Zhiyuan Robotics Yuanzheng A1, the team revealed its "factory working scenario", for example, it can assemble chassis in car factories:

As for the adaptation of the robot's capabilities, it can be achieved by adjusting the large model on the Expedition A1, such as transforming its "brain" into a version suitable for manufacturing. This large model is called WkGPT, which has prior knowledge and a thinking chain, and is "adjusted and optimized based on an open source large model with tens of billions of parameters."

According to the team, the core joints and hands of the Expedition A1, as well as the middleware system and thinking system during runtime, are also self-developed by the team. At the Zhiyuan Robotics launch conference, the team revealed that it was in close talks with leading domestic automobile companies. Now it seems that this car manufacturer is BYD. Of course, BYD may not only be interested in Zhihuijun's Expedition A1, but also the attention paid to the entire track. The humanoid robot track is really hot. As part of the bionic robot industry, the humanoid robot track is becoming more and more popular. Humanoid robots were brought to fame by Boston Dynamics' Atlas, during which companies such as UBTECH joined in. After the release of Optimus Prime Opmus in 2022, this track became completely popular.

Including Xiaomi's CyberOne, Dreami's universal humanoid robot, Cloud Ginger from Dahua, etc., have gradually emerged in this field. For example, the recently launched Yushu H1 robot is 1.8 meters tall and weighs 47 kilograms. Its current walking speed is greater than 1.5m/s, and its potential movement speed can reach more than 5m/s.

Since it is equipped with 3D laser radar and depth camera, according to Yushu officials, the price of this robot will be less than 90,000 US dollars (about 650,000 RMB), but the official said that it will take 3-10 years before it is officially commercialized. For example, the GR-1 robot released by Fourier not long ago has 40 degrees of freedom in the whole body, the maximum joint module peak torque can reach 300N.m, the walking speed can reach 5km/h (about 1.4m/s), it can carry 50 kg, can avoid obstacles, respond to impact interference, etc. Not only are technology companies in full swing, but the academic community is also continuing to study humanoid robots, including Tsinghua University, Beijing Institute of Technology, Zhejiang University, etc. For example, Chen Jianyu's team at the Institute of Cross-Disciplinary Information Sciences of Tsinghua University recently produced a humanoid robot "Xiaoxing", from the whole machine structure, motor, reducer, to gait, etc., all the software is self-developed.

The world's first academic work combining large models with humanoid robots was produced by this team.

In addition, Beijing Institute of Technology Huahui Intelligent Technology Co., Ltd., which was established based on the robotics team of Beijing Institute of Technology, recently launched the Huitong humanoid robot at the World Robot Conference. Huitong is 165cm tall and weighs 55kg. It can jump over 0.5m high and reach a long jump distance of 1m. The official introduction says that it is "the highest and farthest motor-driven humanoid robot in the world."

Editor: Huang Fei