Robotics Start-Up

 

Ex-Google engineer joins Shanghai robotics start-up to take lead on advanced AI research


A pre-eminent Google scientist, Luo Jianlan, has joined Chinese humanoid robotics company AgiBot, known on the mainland as Zhiyuan, to lead the Shanghai-based start-up’s new artificial intelligence (AI) research centre.
Known as a leading scholar in AI and robotics, Luo will spearhead the establishment of the Zhiyuan Embodied Intelligence Research Centre as the newly appointed chief scientist of AgiBot, a start-up co-founded in 2023 by former Huawei Technologies “Genius Youth” recruit Peng Zhihui.

Luo has closely collaborated with renowned computer scientist Sergey Levine, a co-founder of San Francisco-based AI start-up Physical Intelligence. He previously worked at Google’s “moon shot factory” Google X and AI research lab Google DeepMind.

Luo – who obtained his doctoral degree from the University of California, Berkeley and served as a postdoctoral scholar at the Berkeley Artificial Intelligence Research Lab – is the latest US-trained scientist to return to China and join prominent domestic start-ups and institutions.

Born in 1993, Luo graduated from the Wuhan University of Technology’s Automotive School before he was admitted into UC Berkeley in 2015.

In his web page, Luo wrote that his research centres on “enabling robust long-term autonomy for complex real-world systems; drawing on tools and concepts from machine learning, controls and robotics”.

Luo’s appointment at AgiBot was announced on Wednesday in conjunction with the Chinese start-up’s partnership with Physical Intelligence.

The two companies will jointly work on so-called embodied intelligence, which will enable humanoid robots to perform “complex tasks in dynamic environments” for a long duration, according to a statement from AgiBot.

Initial results from their partnership included leveraging a general-purpose foundation AI model to execute multiple tasks using various prompts.

The foundation model, for example, allows a robotic arm with so-called six degrees of freedom – the independent movements it can make – to adapt to different “end effectors”, which are peripheral devices attached to a robot’s wrist that allows the machine to interact with its task, as well a range of sensors for visual inputs.

A demonstration video from AgiBot showed one of its robot models performing several tasks, including donning a scarf in front of a mirror, pouring wine, picking up a trash bag and opening a door with its left hand.

AgiBot’s collaboration with the American AI start-up, along with the Chinese firm’s plan to produce up to 5,000 humanoid robots this year, further intensifies competition in China’s robotics industry, which has seen local government bodies race to provide policy support for the sector.
China’s Ministry of Industry and Information Technology said in November that the country should achieve mass production of humanoid robots by 2025, and have them “become an important new engine of economic growth” by 2027.
Automation enabled by intelligent robots will allow for a massive expansion in production capacity across industries, and China is currently “the only country that is positioned” to achieve a high level of automation, according to a report published last month by US-based independent research firm SemiAnalysis.
For investors, AgiBot has emerged as one of the most sought-after humanoid robot makers in China, along with Unitree Robotics in Hangzhou and UBTech Robotics in Shenzhen.
AgiBot has completed multiple funding rounds from major venture-capital firms such as GL Ventures, HSG and CAS Star, as well as domestic carmakers like BYD and Beijing Automotive Group.
Chinese video-gaming and social media giant Tencent Holdings invested in the start-up’s latest funding round in March, the Post reported.

Physical Intelligence – also known as PI or the single character “π” – was founded last year by a team of top scientists, roboticists and entrepreneurs.

The company is focused on developing a foundational model for robotics to bring general-purpose AI into the physical world. In November, it raised US$400 million at a US$2.4 billion post-money valuation.

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