Baymax dream of world champion robot

    On first floor of Goocoo Plaza in Hefei City, Anhui Province, the cloud interactive robot Kejia, under independent research and development of University Of Science and Technology Of China (“USTC” for short), started to function as shopping guide for customers from Jan., 2015 and started its three-month probation period. It is the first time for Kejia to enter large-scale public place off campus from laboratory, to conduct wide-range autonomous navigation under conditions with major pedestrian movement, and to provide considerate services such as shopping consultation and dining guide to different customers; this move means that its research and development go into practical stage. Chen Xiaoping, Director of Robot Research Center under USTC, once pointed out that they should strive to realize mass production of Kejia who once won world champion in 3 years, to let Kejia step into thousands of households and become real-life “Baymax” when he received interview of Takungpao. /Reported by Bo Yong, Journalist of Takungpao
    With globally hot showing of Disney cartoon “Big Hero 6” (translated as “Big Hero Alliance” in Hong Kong), the warm man “Baymax” (with English name of Baymax) with curing effect lets service robot be the hot topic in the industry. In mainland China, it is named as “Baymax”, in Taiwan, it is named as “Beimian”, and in Hong Kong, it has a new name of “Asclepius”. It is lovely and cute; as a robot doctor, it is quite competent; it can conduct quick scanning, detect abnormal emotion or injury in human body and give treatment. There is no audience who watched this film but did not want to possess such a “Baymax”.

Shopping guide in shopping mall to test the practicability
　　“We will spare no effort for this!” Chen Xiaoping emphasized. Currently, robot Kejia is still in testing stage; the robot research center is making preparations for realization of mass production in 3 to 5 years. In accordance with newly adjusted objectives, the predicted output shall be 10 times larger than scale of original plan.
　　Kejia won the world champion in last year. On the competition terrain of 18th Robo Cup held in Brazil, with huge advantage where the technical evaluation for main body is over 3600 points more than the second place, Kejia for the first time won champion in service robot contest, which indicates that there is historical breakthrough for service robot in China.
　　Kejia returned to China with honor, then it made new attempt to enter large-scale public place from laboratory. As for Goocoo Plaza it serviced this time, the total area is more than 100,000 m2, there are more than 300 shops, and the average daily passenger flow is about 100,000 person•time. This complicated environment cannot be copied in laboratory, including severe noises, simultaneously servicing large amount of customers, universal existence of glass curtain wall which is hard for laser sensor to distinguish, and etc.
　　The above factors put forth huge challenge for classical autonomous localization and navigation of robots and for man-machine interaction. Nevertheless, this little girl in red and black formal dress responded to each question, welcomed customers and saw them off; her nearly professional performance won praise from many customers.
　　Chen Xiaoping analyzed and said: “Kejia is able to successfully break through traditional one-to-one model in man-robot dialogue, because there are two supports: one is basic hardware platform, i.e. tour guide robot under independent research and development of Kejia Robot R&D Team of USTC, and the other is some technologies in cloud robot platform (a platform under joint development of USTC and Carnegie Mellon University in USA)”.

Still there is space for cost reduction and function optimization
　　However, the Vice General Manager Chen Gang of Anhui Goocoo Robot Industry Holdings LTD pointed out that there was large space for cost reduction and function optimization of Kejia, and that Goocoo Group would continue to provide full support in capital investment and market exploitation. He holds that the upgrading of service robot continues to speed up, so the realization of mass production of Kejia should be accelerated to grab market opportunities.
　　Chen Xiaoping said frankly that problems such as high cost were indeed the short plank of Kejia to be solved. Currently, the cost for research, development and production of one “cloud interactive robot Kejia” is about hundreds of thousands of Yuan. However, the short plank of Kejia is longer than that of equivalent foreign products; the cost of Kejia is about one tenth of that of equivalent foreign products.
　　The Robot Research and Development Team of USTC started to study intelligent robots from 1998; at first, they conducted cutting-edge scientific research based on foreign hardware platform; they started independent research and development for hardware and software of the whole robot in 2007; the upgrading of model machine is continuous. Kejia has been the third generation of service robots.
　　Besides Kejia winning world champion, USTC also retains the title in multi-robot 2D simulation competition; USTC won first place or second place in continuous ten years (5 times of first place and 5 times of second place), which created new history. Otherwise, USTC also won the first place in “free challenge” match of multi-robot 2D simulation competition.
　　Over the years, Chen Xiaoping has been thinking how to be the best in technology and design of service robot. In his opinion, large amount of practical results in software technology of service robots have been accumulated, but there is huge space for improvement and enhancement of hardware design level. In future, this team shall focus on hardware and function design to challenge problems, adjust function blocks or optimize combination as soon as possible as per real consumption needs of customers, and try to reduce the cost by 90% or more.
　　“Then, people would only pay 30 to 50 thousand Yuan or even less money to enjoy considerate service of Kejia, including doing housework automatically every day, presenting delicious meal on time, accompanying children in study and entertainment, providing health supervision for old people, and etc.” he smiled and asked a rhetorical question, “How would a customer be not willing to accept it?”

Explosive growth to be predicted
　　Therefore, he gave out optimistic evaluation when he talked about market prospect of global service robots, and he expected a high likelihood of its explosive growth. He expressed that the research, development and application of service robots would be in a condition of “abyss of misery and hot fire” in long term. On one hand, technology research and product design would be in abyss of misery, there are a lot of issues that require continuous research in robot technology, thus to provide continuous support for product upgrading for decades; on the other hand, the application of product would be quite hot, though there may be fluctuation in future, the application would continue to be hot.
　　 “Of course, just like China’s internet enterprises in the early period of entrepreneurship, most developers and manufacturers of service robots would become martyr or cannon fodder. Even so, we would go forth! Only when we go forth rapidly, is there possibility of survival, and may we win success in occupying the market.”