Standards for humanoids will speed their use

Editor's note: The technical committee for humanoid robots and embodied intelligence standardization under the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology released a standards system for humanoid robots and embodied artificial intelligence on Saturday. The six-part system is China's first top-level framework covering the entire industry chain of humanoid robots. Liang Liang, secretary-general of the committee, and Jiang Lei, its vice-chair, spoke to China Central Television about the objectives of the standards system and the prospects of humanoid robots being used in everyday tasks. Below are excerpts of the interview. The views don't necessarily represent those of China Daily.

The newly issued standards system aims to unify technical specifications and evaluation criteria throughout the industry. This will help reduce the cost of collaboration and adaptation across the industry chain and promote large-scale, generalized development of components. It is also hoped that the system of standards will guide research and development resources to focus on core areas and help avoid low-level and redundant R&D.

Humanoid robots and embodied intelligence technologies are being iterated rapidly. The technologies involved include computing, materials, hardware and software. In such a fast evolving field, there is an urgent need to formulate unified standards for the industry. Most pressing is the need for safety standards.

Ensuring humanoid robots can be used safely, as well as cybersecurity and data security, should be given top priority. This necessitates having standards governing the management of their batteries and the safety and reliability of the hardware, such as rules relating to when the robots can make decisions on their own and when humans should intervene. In all these aspects, standards are urgently required. When safety standards are introduced, public trust in humanoid robots is likely to increase, accelerating the application of robots.

The committee will take the lead in developing some core standards concerning key components, data and models.

It is recommended that the public embrace emerging technologies and humanoid robot products, while refraining from having overly high expectations in the short term. People should use the products in a gradual and step-by-step manner to form good usage habits and promote the implementation of related applications. The committee will develop standards for the application of humanoid robots in each scenario based on user feedback and the pace of product iteration.

People have already witnessed the rapid development of humanoid robots: they can do backflips, parkour and even perform tasks that ordinary humans cannot. Yet they need to become more reliable to share more of the work of humans.

Notably, humanoid robots can play a significant role in "3D scenarios" — dirty, dangerous and difficult jobs that people are unwilling to perform.

People have been talking about the Spring Festival Gala show, which featured performances of humanoid robots. Some ask whether the robots are ready to work in ordinary households, since they have demonstrated such strong capabilities.

However, several challenges need to be overcome for humanoid robots to enter more real-world scenarios. Bottlenecks exist in data technology, computing power, the generalization ability of models and the development of components such as dexterous hands and electronic skin. If these bottlenecks are not addressed effectively, it will be difficult for humanoid robots to operate in ordinary households.