Transforming toys into high-tech products

Youngsters at a robot contest in Nanning, the Guangxi Zhuang autonomous region. CHEN BO’AN / XINHUA

"The intelligent toy industry is on the verge of a tipping point. With the development of technology, intelligence has been incorporated into traditional toys, which will become hi-tech products now," said Sheng Xiaofeng, chief product officer at Putao.

Moreover, most of the young parents now were born in the 1980s. They have a high degree of acceptance of technical products. They pay more attention to cultivating children's qualities, said Sheng.

"Children these days tend to use many hi-tech products such as tablets and smartphones, so they accept intelligent toys easily," Sheng said.

China's second-child policy, which was officially implemented from Jan 1, is expected to further stimulate the growth of the toy market.

Sheng said the company will release an intelligent hardware product this summer. It will be equipped with various sensors to help children explore the world. By the end of this year, the company's portfolio will have more than 20 types of intelligent toys with a focus on wearable devices, sensors and apps.

By downloading the relevant app, parents could also collect the data about the time and frequency of their children's use of the toys.

Although the intelligent toy industry is still in the early stage of development, a number of domestic and foreign companies are tapping into the field, including internet giant Tencent Holdings Ltd, Danish toy giant Lego S/A and Guangdong Alpha Animation and Culture Co Ltd.

In January, Alpha Animation and Culture launched a robot that could listen, watch, think and accompany the children. It is equipped with the Turing OS developed by Turing Robot, the first Chinese company engaged in research in the commercialization of artificial intelligence, and possesses the capacities of speech recognition, semantic analysis, emotion, visual recognition and self-learning ability.