Guangdong's Heavy Position AI and robots: forming an industry innovation alliance to 'attack technology' and carry out 'robot+' action to explore scenarios

Domestic large-scale models are accelerating the refresh of the ‘progress bar,’ also driving the gradual maturity of humanoid robot ‘brain.’ Guangdong, which possesses the ‘soft and hard wings’ of artificial intelligence and electromechanics, will certainly not miss the opportunity.

Data shows that in the field of traditional industrial robots, Guangdong has taken the lead, with industrial robot production expected to exceed 240,000 units and ( sets by 2024, accounting for approximately 44% of the country. However, at the same time, in key components such as reducers, servo motors and systems, controllers, etc., Guangdong still appears to be ‘missing links’, and the intelligence level of robots also needs to be improved.

On March 10, the General Office of the People’s Government of Guangdong Province issued the “Guangdong Province’s Measures for Promoting the Innovative Development of Artificial Intelligence and Robotics Industry” (hereinafter referred to as the “Measures”), which aims to build an ecosystem for industry development from the dimensions of technological breakthroughs, data elements, application scenarios, open source ecology, investment and financing, etc.

In fact, since the beginning of this year, there has been a significant acceleration in macroscopic actions surrounding the smart robot industry in Guangdong Province. From the Guangdong Provincial Government’s work report on “robots +” to the explicit proposal in the “Guangdong Province Construction of a Modern Industrial System by 2025 Action Plan” to “vigorously develop humanoid robots and other intelligent robots with personalities”, the continuous refinement of policies conveys determination for development. The high temperature of the robotics industry will evolve from pure market enthusiasm to a more orderly and organized enthusiasm.

Southern Finance and Economics All-Media Journalist found that compared with previous policies, this “Measures” starts to pay attention to open source innovation in artificial intelligence and robots, and further emphasizes the application landing. In particular, by clarifying the financial support quotas for enterprises, public platforms, and other entities, the industry support is further upgraded. For example, in the industrial field, large models and application cases, and open source communities can receive up to 8 million yuan in subsidies annually.

In addition, the construction of the whole ecosystem is placed in a prominent position. In addition to encouraging collaborative innovation and the construction of related public platforms, legislation and institutional support in the field of artificial intelligence and robotics have also been put on the agenda. Guangdong aims to create an inclusive, cautious, innovative, and daring atmosphere for the intelligent robotics industry.

Cultivating high-quality enterprises: the highest reward for a single champion is 3 million yuan

Recently, Morgan Stanley released a research report “Humanoid Robots 100: Drawing a Value Chain Map of Humanoid Robots”, with 11 Guangdong companies listed, accounting for about one-third of the shortlisted Chinese companies. In terms of the main body, in addition to players in the robotics field, companies such as Xiaopeng, GAC, and BYD from the automotive industry have actively entered this track.

At the enterprise level, Guangdong has formed a leading team.

The “cultivation of high-quality enterprises” runs through the entire policy of the robotics industry. The previously issued “Action Plan for Cultivating Strategic Emerging Industry Clusters of Intelligent Robots in Guangdong Province” also proposes to enhance the strength of backbone enterprises, support leading enterprises in the industry to strengthen technological development, technological transformation, and talent introduction, and accelerate technological innovation and industrial development.

By contrast, this “measure” focuses on small and medium-sized enterprises. It is reported that Guangdong will build a hierarchical cultivation system for artificial intelligence and robotics enterprises, focusing on national single champion enterprises and specialized small and medium-sized enterprises, with the provincial finance department providing incentives in a 1:1 ratio for reward funds at the municipal level, with maximum reward amounts of 3 million yuan and 2 million yuan, respectively.

“Only small businesses face survival pressure, and only then do they have a strong desire for technological breakthroughs.” Wang Lizong, President of Guangdong High-tech Industry Association, believes that it is necessary to further increase support for small and medium-sized enterprises with a focus on technology, innovation, strategy, and future, so that more resources are inclined towards financing and exploring more challenging markets for small and medium-sized enterprises.

In addition to direct financial support, the ‘Measures’ also take into account the talents, funds, and other elements needed for the development of robotic enterprises.

On the one hand, it is required to cultivate and support high-level discipline construction in the field of artificial intelligence and robotics around universities, and to encourage related cities to introduce special policies for talent in the artificial intelligence and robotics industry; on the other hand, it is necessary to strengthen industrial investment and financing, such as setting up an artificial intelligence and robotics industry fund in the cluster of provincial industrial development investment funds, focusing on early investment, small investment, long-term investment, and hard technology investment, innovating fund management mechanisms, and strengthening fault-tolerant mechanisms with core exemption of due diligence and compliance responsibilities; guiding financial institutions to provide full lifecycle financial services for related enterprises, and increasing the policy support for loan interest subsidies and risk compensation.

Strengthening the innovation ecosystem: the maximum funding of the national innovation center is 50 million yuan

The industry consensus is that key components still have “missing links”.

CEO Li Weichong of Guangzhou Li Gong Industrial Co., Ltd. stated that Guangdong, especially in the research and development of key components such as high-performance motors and drives, high-performance reducers, advanced sensors, suffers from insufficient research and development, which affects the performance, motion precision, and environmental perception capabilities of robots. The integration of AI algorithms with humanoid robots has not matured, and intelligent decision-making, human-computer interaction, etc. are also waiting to be breakthroughs.

Therefore, “supporting key core technology research and development” is written in the first clause of the “Measures”. However, the Southern Finance and Economics All-Media reporter found that, compared to previous policies, this “Measures” places greater emphasis on the construction of a collaborative innovation ecosystem.

According to the Measures, Guangdong supports various innovative entities such as enterprises, universities, and research institutes to carry out joint research, and establish industrial innovation alliances; for qualified national and provincial manufacturing innovation centers, Guangdong will provide maximum funding support of 50 million yuan and 10 million yuan respectively as required.

It is worth noting that the ‘open source spark’ brought by DeepSeek has already migrated to the robotics industry. UBT has recently announced the validation of the effectiveness of DeepSeek technology in humanoid robot application scenarios.

In this context, in order to accelerate technology inclusion, innovation fission, and reduce robot training costs, the ‘measures’ support all parties to jointly build open source communities, open source ecological centers, and related public service platforms, providing computing power scheduling, open industry big data training libraries, standard test datasets, large model evaluation open services, testing verification and other services. It is reported that Guangdong will select and support up to 5 open source communities and open source ecological centers each year, providing a maximum of 30% of their approved operating expenses for the previous year, with a maximum subsidy of 8 million yuan.

The construction of the ecosystem is receiving increasing attention. The “Action Plan for the Innovation and Industrial Development of Embodied Intelligent Robots in Shenzhen (2025-2027)” issued at the beginning of March also proposes to build a public service platform matrix including key laboratories, innovation platforms, inspection and testing platforms, small and medium-sized test bases, and cross-ontology diverse open-source data sets.

In addition, data remains one of the biggest bottlenecks in the industry. It is generally believed in the industry that the cost of data collection in the robotics industry is high, and the commercial value is not yet clear. In response to this, the ‘Measures’ also proposes to build high-quality AI datasets and corpora, develop data trading markets, and promote the establishment of national data trading places in Guangzhou and Shenzhen data exchanges.

Currently, the Guangdong Intelligent Robot Innovation Center has started to integrate data resources. Its R&D director, Li Zengkai, revealed that the center plans to deploy approximately 100 data collection seats by 2025, producing millions of data points annually for robot training. Public platforms like this are playing an increasingly important role in ecosystem integration.

Build application scenarios: The highest reward for industrial large models is 8 million yuan

As the link to the ultimate realization of value in the robotics industry, application scenarios are also the field for training, verification, data collection, and driving product iteration and optimization. The unfolding of scenarios is crucial for accelerating industrial scale and cost reduction. Only by connecting application scenarios can the robotics industry form a closed loop.

The Measures propose to create application scenarios, organize the “robot +” action, focus on industrial, agricultural, urban management, medical, elderly care services, special operations and other fields, deeply explore open application scenarios; encourage cities in various regions to explore various open application scenarios, attract enterprises to create a batch of typical cases.

In fact, accelerating the landing application has always been the policy focus of this year. The previous provincial government work report also proposed to deepen the application of “robot+” in key areas, and create a number of intelligent manufacturing demonstration factories and excellent scenarios.

Currently, several humanoid robot head enterprises in Guangdong have received orders. For example, Ligo Industrial has received orders for nearly a thousand humanoid robots; U-best revealed that it has received intentions for over 500 humanoid robots from car factories, and will achieve small-scale production and delivery this year. Training will further expand to deploy 20-50 units in each factory, to verify the multi-position and multi-machine collaboration of humanoid robots, which is also the final POC test before mass production.

From the perspective of applications, the automotive industry is a key scenario. Ubtech’s Walker S has successively entered JiKe 5G, FAW-Volkswagen, Audi FAW, BYD, and recently entered Foxconn’s logistics handling scenario at the beginning of the year. Leju Robot has partnered with Haier, BAIC, and others. Orders from Rigo Industrial mainly come from warehouse logistics, automotive manufacturing, and other fields.

From automobile manufacturing to household appliances and 3C electronics, the above-mentioned application scenarios are basically centered around the advantageous industries in Guangdong.

UBTECH’s CBO Tan Min explained that the automotive manufacturing industry relies on humanoid robots for upgrading and transformation to solve the problem of labor shortage. Humanoid robots also need the POC tests provided by the car factory, especially the data collection, which is crucial for accumulating core capabilities. It is reported that after the first phase of training at BYD, Walker S1’s work efficiency has doubled, and its stability has also increased by 30%. It is expected to have the ability for mass delivery in the second quarter of this year.

According to the Measures, Guangdong also focuses on the landing of intelligent robots in the industrial field, proposing to carry out AI-enabled new industrialization pilots based on key industry clusters, supporting the development of large models and application solutions in the industrial field, and selecting and supporting up to 10 benchmark cases each year, with a maximum reward of up to 8 million yuan for each case.

(Source: 21st Century Business Herald)

Source: East Money

Author: 21st Century Business Herald