Chinese developers have taught a humanoid robot to talk, think and give advice

The Chinese company UBTech concluded a partnership agreement with Baidu. The goal — to endow a humanoid robot with natural speech and the ability to reason in real time.

UBTech has successfully integrated Baidu's ERNIE Bot multi-modal AI platform into its new industrial humanoid robot Walker S. The robot performs voice commands, comments on their actions, answers questions and even gives advice.

The UBTech company was founded in 2012 in Shenzhen and two years later presented its first humanoid robot. In in 2016, several hundred such robots learned common dance steps, and in in 2017, the Guinness Book of Records recorded the dance of over a thousand robots moving in unison to rhythmic electronic music.

UBTech for the first time showcased its full-size Walker service robot at CES 2018. Late last year, a redesigned Walker S took to the stage in Hong Kong with company executives to strike the gong to mark the company's IPO. Now the robot is ready to challenge its brothers Figure 01, Eve and Phoenix, demonstrating skills of communication, logic and coordination of movements.

Built-in depth sensors and video cameras help the robot get an idea of ​​the surrounding world and navigate in it, avoid obstacles and recognize three-dimensional objects. The integration of artificial intelligence has enabled the robot to communicate in natural human language, be creative in executing commands, and even give people advice on clothing and appearance.