CloudMinds (达闼机器人), a Chinese cloud-powered robot developer, will likely roll out a consumer-grade robot in 2025, its founder said recently.
During a talk with Chinese business media, Huang Xiaoqing, who is also CEO of Shanghai-based CloudMinds, said this goal has become possible after the recent launch of the company’s self-developed large language model RobotGPT.
This is a multi-modal cognitive AI model capable of processing a massive amount of data and conducting intuitive conversations, making the robot sound like a real human being.
Robot is the next most important computing device after PC and smartphone, Huang told reporters.
As the world’s first 5G cloud-powered robot developer, “CloudMinds hopes to provide cloud-based robotic services to every household,” he noted.
CloudMinds, which is in the midst of seeking an IPO in Hong Kong, is a pioneer in what it calls cloud-enabled robotics.
This refers to the technical approach of separating the robot’s physical and “mental” functions.
Specifically, this involves assigning the task of data processing to a super-fast cloud computing server instead of placing a processor within the robot.
Meanwhile, the robotic body and limbs are only responsible for sensing the surrounding environment and carrying out commands received via 5G networks from the cloud server.
In Huang’s opinion, aside from a bipedal architecture and cloud-based intelligence, the new RobotGPT model will allow the robot to have its own “soul,” meaning that it thinks, talks and behaves like a real person.
Huang is convinced that this approach represents the future, where robots can provide more intelligent and efficient services thanks to a remote, invisible “brain.”
With the huge advances of 5G technologies, cloud computing servers can be trusted with more complicated computing tasks, Huang noted.
This distributed system will effectively bring down the costs of robotic bodies and parts, making robots more affordable to the average consumer.
Huang, an AI and cloud computing industry veteran, is confident that cloud-driven robotics, as represented by CloudMinds, will become the best carrier of general-purpose AI on the back of innovations similar to RobotGPT.
“Through data training, we can come up with robots that come closer to resembling human beings and are hopeful of disrupting and improving the industry,” he said.
