There was a recent robot demo that was rather impressive, but unfortunately, due to, I guess you could say, perhaps a lack of media coverage on this event, it was something That was widely under looked.

This, what you're about to see, is a robotics demo from the company called UBITECH, and they've been making robots for quite some time.

And in this demo, the reason I'm covering it is because it's actually very similar to a demo we recently saw.

If you're all familiar with Figures demo that we saw very recently, this is pretty much on the same level in terms of what they're trying to accomplish.

Without any more talking, let's take a look at the demo, what exactly it is, and then after I'll give you guys my thoughts and why I think this is perhaps a little bit more Impressive than you may initially believe.

Walker, I'm going on a business trip tomorrow.

Can you help me fold this shirt in your hand?

Of course you can.

Walker, have you folded your shirt?

Yes, I have.

Walker, which color of pants do you think would look better with this black shirt?

Walker, please help me put the switches on the table on different plates.

Walker, how do you ensure the accuracy and efficiency of the disassembly?

We just saw a rather impressive demo from the Ubitec Walker S. Now, whether or not you're intrigued by this demo and impressed, I think it was something that was really cool.

One of the first things that might have been overlooked was at the first couple of seconds, we got to see that this robot, the Walker S, actually has a cool feature, which Is clearly the detachable hands.

We can see that this robot is literally able to place its hands on, and it seems to be very, very magnetic, which seems to be some kind of modular design, which is actually Really, really cool, which could mean that potentially this robot could upgrade itself in the future as long as there are different bits to be upgraded.

And I find that the modular design of this shows us that we're dealing with a different kind of robot here.

This start bit isn't something to be underestimated because that aspect not only is it cool in terms of being able to use it for various different things, I think it's Rather effective because what we could have is we could have the Walker S be able to use its modular design.

Maybe it realizes that, okay, I need to do a certain task which requires a more delicate approach.

It's able to quickly walk around

And then say, okay, I'm going to apply the hands, boom, slap them on, and then I can take that task into my own hands and do it rather effectively.

Or let's say I need to grab something and it requires a different kind of hand, a different kind of gripper, I can go ahead and apply that different gripper and then I can Go ahead and get to work. So, that is something that I think most people did miss about this demo because the applications for that are quite impressive.

And looking at some of the other humanoid robots, something that a company recently did do, Agility Robotics actually recently did change their hands and Boston Dynamics Also did the same thing.

I'm wondering if this is going to be a future trend where robots are going to be able to have detachable or swappable hands that are for different industry tasks, which in Theory, it does make sense.

Modular design seems to be something really impressive.

Another thing that was, of course, rather impressive was the fact that this seems to be fully autonomous and whatever AI system is running, we can see that in the centre Here, it seems to be some kind of visual representation of the AI model being truly responsive and doesn't seem to be like some kind of actual rehearsed demo that we've seen In previous robotics updates.

It says right here, Walker, I have a business trip tomorrow.

Can you help me fold the clothing item in your hands?

And we can see that it started with the clothing item in its hands.

Clothing is definitely something really hard.

And it does say right here, task breakdown and planning, and it says, okay, I'm able to do this.

And what we can also see is at the top right hand corner of this, we can also see some kind of onboard vision model doing this task.

Whatever system they're currently using, we know that this is real time, not as if it's been done before.

And this is something that is really, really, really effective as it's autonomous and in real time, you can see it places the shirt, then it grabs the other part of the Shirt, and it demonstrates the soft object manipulation.

You can see it then is able to grab that part of the shirt, is able to fold that bit, able to get the hand to slide underneath.

And then is able to fold the shirt completely, which looks to be as if it's completed the task.

And then it grabs the shirt back and it moves its arms in this really kind of strange way, to be honest, which is pretty uncanny.

You know, the way the robot's hands just kind of twist around like here, I don't know, I just find that just a little bit uncanny from robots.

I know that robots aren't human, but definitely something that I just want to mention.

But anyways, after that, we can see that they essentially talk to the robot and they say, Walker, have you finished folding the clothes?

And he says, yes, I have.

And then he's able to pick up the clothes and is able to hand them to him.

This is something that was, I think that's actually really, really impressive.

And I know that sometimes people are not impressed by certain demos, but I think being able to autonomously grab a shirt and fold a shirt and then pick that shirt up and Hand it to someone, I think the level of difficulty here is a lot harder because the demo that we recently saw from Tesla's Optimus actually showed us that I think at the Time it wasn't even autonomous.

I'm not entirely sure on that, but as far as I remember, there were only a few demos of a robot being able to autonomously do that.

This seems like something really, really effective.

And the reason I say that is because a robot trying to fold something like a shirt, it isn't exactly a hard object.

Like it's like a soft object, which means it needs a different kind of manipulation in order to be able to do it very, very effectively.

Then he asked Walker, what kind of pants would match this black t-shirt?

And then he says matching with dark colored pants is more suitable for formal occasions.

Essentially here was where we saw something that was once again quite similar to what we saw with Tesla.

And essentially we saw this Walker robot being able to swap and sort these switches on the table.

We saw that there was a visual language model, I'm guessing, object based 60 pose recognition, autonomous motion planning.

These are the texts that they added.

And I did see this demo a couple of days ago, but they released this updated one. So that's why I wanted to cover it.

Like I said, it seems that this is autonomously being able to sort these items differently.

And I do think that it is quite fascinating on how it was to do this.

I think one thing that this robot doesn't have, and this isn't a dig at the robots at all, I think they've done something pretty amazing, is that it doesn't seem too fluid And it doesn't seem too fast.

And right here, you can see that the person does actually manage to adjust it.

I'm not sure why they did that because it did seem to be in the field of view.

You can see the vision system in the bottom right hand corner.

It's able to identify that this is a person, that this is the switch right here.

I'm not sure why the person moved it.

Maybe the robot did get a little bit confused, but we're able to see that it is able to have real time trajectory planning and place those objects.

And then, of course, in real time, after seeing that this has been placed there, the robot is then able to place this right back into its rightful position.

And you can see that the task is done.

And of course, we here have this question asked and it.

And then, this is where we get into some of the additional details of the Walker S robot.

Essentially, how do you ensure the accuracy and efficiency of sorting task results?

And this is basically the question of how do you ensure that things go well?

And then here they break it down.

The reason I said that this is rather similar to figures recent breakthrough with OpenAI is because this is one of the first robots using an onboard LLM in order to complete Certain tasks that wouldn't really be available and in order to change certain tasks together to make the robot more effective.

And you can see that it describes it in the bottom right hand corner.

It says during the process, I am using the Ernie bot from the Baidu foundation model platform to break down and reason tasks combined with visual language models or visual Models to detect anomalies and update the grasping guaranteeing this task successful completion, even in the presence of interference.

They're basically saying that they're using Baidu's model to be able to essentially be more effective with this AI robot.

The reason that this is so cool is because we saw this demo with Figure if you remember, and if you haven't been paying attention, this is literally one of the most viewed Videos on my channel within the last couple of days, and I'm sure that many people are understanding the significance of exactly what's going on.

And the point here is that this is rather similar because whilst this robot I got to be honest with you guys, you can immediately see the fluidity difference in terms of how Quickly it's able to move things and how the joints and actuators are moving so fluidly.

But we can't deny that there is a significant similar ability in terms of being able to autonomously plan and execute tasks.

One of the things that you might be wondering about this company is who on earth are UBITECH anyways?

Did this company just spawn out of nowhere?

Where are they even from?

What do they do?

What on earth is going on here?

Essentially, UBITECH Robotics Corp Ltd is also known as UBITECH, and it's a company that operates in the artificial intelligence and humanoid robotics sector.

And this company was founded in 2012, and it's engaged in the research and development, design, smart production, and the commercialization of smart service robots.

The company's offerings are actually quite diverse, ranging from humanoid robots designed for consumer use to smart service robots that find applications in various sectors, Including healthcare, education, and commercial services.

And the video that you're watching right now is of course something that is the big announcement that they did recently.

UBITECH has actually made significant strides in the field of robotics, developing products that are not only technologically advanced, but also designed to meet the needs Of its customers.

The company has actually been in several notable projects and achievements over the years.

For instance, its robots have been used to assist medical workers during the COVID-19 pandemic, and it has developed robots like Adibot, which is designed for disinfection Purposes.

And they've also been recognized in their innovation techniques at Consumer Electronics Show and events like that.

Recently, they've actually been attracting significant investment, including $1.34 billion across five funding rounds from 25 investors.

And of course, recently, what you're seeing on screen, they went public, listing on the Hong Kong Stock Exchange, which actually marked a significant milestone and growth And development.

And the stock price actually is up quite a bit since that day.

Pretty much we have here an innovative Chinese company that has recently decided to use its existing robotics company to merge with the existing state-of-the-art LLMs and Existing state-of-the-art vision models in order to be able to increase its AI systems capabilities.

And recently, they've been listed on the Hong Kong Stock Exchange.

It seems like once again, China is ramping up its efforts in order to keep up with other countries on their robotics developments.

It's actually rather impressive, some of the things that they've been able to do.

And there was actually a recent announcement that I did want to cover.

The Walker S, you might be wondering what on earth is this?

You might be wondering what on earth is this actual robot?

Like, how good is it?

The Walker S robot is actually the humanoid robot that is designed for industrial applications, including working on electric vehicle assembly lines.

And this advanced robot is part of the company's broader efforts to develop and deploy humanoid robots for various applications, both industrial and consumer oriented.

The Walker S model has been specifically highlighted for its application in the electric vehicle assembly process, where it has been piloted in tasks such as quality Inspections of headlight covers and inspections of door locks and seatbelts, as well as attaching electric vehicle company logos.

This deployment showcases the robot's capabilities in precise and repetitive tasks contributing to the automation and efficiency of the assembly line.

And the Walker S robot in terms of the specifications stands 4.75 feet tall, weighs 170 pounds, equipped with 36 degrees of freedom that allow for smooth and flexible Movements, and it features advanced navigation and vision systems, including SLAM, which is simultaneous localization and mapping for autonomous navigation around homes and Businesses, and obstacle avoidance to determine the best path through dynamic environments.

Its self-balancing capabilities actually include a full range of sensing systems, including force, vision, hearing and spatial awareness, enabling it to perform tasks with Precision and safely interact with human environments.

And this robot is designed to operate in semi-structured environments capable of walking on multiple types of terrain and performing tasks that require hand-eye coordination And object manipulation.

Its arms have 7 degrees of freedom each, allowing for greater manipulation and space flexibility, and the robot's full body flexibility and control systems make it safer for Interaction with humans capable of adapting its centre of gravity to maintain balance and perform tasks with precision.

Overall, the Ubitec Walker S robot represents a significant advancement in the field of robotics, and it's quite surprising on how they've managed to catch up.

This recent demo in the robot being able to actually do certain things in the robotics factory seems that this pilot was rather successful because it's in the factory and it Seems to be on the assembly line doing certain things.

Whilst it does seem pretty slow, and the applications do seem like they're in their alpha/beta phases where you could realistically get a human that's likely cheaper than, I Don't know, a $100,000 robot that walks around and is quite slow and you have to get someone to I guess you could say look around and do certain things, I do think that this Could potentially be part of the assembly line in the future.

And I don't know about you guys, but one of the things I do find rather strange about this robot is the uncanny nature of the way it grabs things.

For example, when we saw this robot right here, when we saw it grab this, I think the seatbelt, it just like moves its hand in this uncanny way and just is able to grab that.

And I don't know, I think this robot is, I wouldn't say freaking me out, but it's definitely quite interesting.

Something else that you might want to know is that, of course, this robot actually has an onboard Large Language Model that it is using, and essentially it's using Baidu.

The competition between Baidu's ERNIE Bot and OpenAI's GPT-4 has actually been a focal point in the development and benchmarking of LLMs, and various sources have provided Insights into the performance of these models across different benchmarks, highlighting their strengths and weaknesses in various domains.

ERNIE Bot was developed by Baidu, it's reportedly, okay, remember, reportedly outperforming GPT-4 in certain benchmarks, and these talks involved the Chinese language, and Baidu claims that Ernie 3.5, a version of their model, surpassed ChatGPT-3.5 in comprehensive ability tests, and outperformed the more advanced ChatGPT-4 in several Chinese Language capabilities.

Whereas GPT-4, on the other hand, we know, has been recognised for its human level performance on various professional and academic benchmarks, including passing a simulated Bar exam with a top 10% of test takers.

In terms of some of the benchmarks that it's done, ERNIE Bot has demonstrated superior performance in Chinese language tests surpassing GPT-4 in benchmarks designed to test AI language models, such as the AGI eval and the CE eval.

However, in English language proficiency, GPT-4 still holds an advantage over ERNIE Bot.

In terms of the general capabilities, the Ernie 4.0 is the latest iteration that has been claimed to be on par with GPT-4 in terms of performance, and I'm guessing that this Is what their robot, Walker S, is using.

Of course Ernie 4.0, which is their latest generation to be on par with GPT-4, it seems to have improvements in understanding, generation, reasoning, and memory, and the CEO Robin Li highlighted the enhanced capabilities in accurately interpreting complex statements and generating high quality content.

Essentially, ERNIE Bot's advancements are evident in creative writing, reasoning, and code generation, with significant improvement in training, inference, and performance.

The conclusion here, in comparison to the companies between OpenAI and, of course, Baidu and UBITECH, we do have some kind of global competition increasing.

Where they are paying a lot of attention to other companies and what they're doing, and we can see that this partnership is very similar to exactly what Figure is trying to do with OpenAI.

And it shows us that, while ERNIE Bot has shown exceptional performance in Chinese language tasks and specific benchmarks, GPT-4 continues to excel in a broader range of professional and academic tasks.

So, it seems that in the future, this is largely going to be one of the biggest races/competitions between companies across borders.

And I think it will be fascinating to see if companies manage to one-up each other constantly, or if certain companies manage to just completely dominate.

It seems that the race is on, and as nation states try to put forward their best effort in terms of their robotics, it seems that the race has started.

Let me know what you think about this robot.

Do you think it is cool?

Do you think it's going to eventually compete with the likes of the robot-like Figure, or are they moving too far ahead?

I do think that competition is good.

It definitely creates a lot more fun in terms of being a consumer of these products, because you get more updates, you get eventually a better product, but overall, I think Competition will be interesting to see where things go, depending on who is managing to develop their thing more effectively, more efficiently, and definitely attract more Investors.

Let me know what you thought about this robot.

Is it going to take down Figure?

Is it going to be the next revolution?

But other way, I think this is actually impressive for an autonomous robot demo with an actual Large Language Model.

With that being said, I'll see you all in the next AI update.