After practicing robot manufacturing for more than 20 years, she has made designing robots as easy as “building blocks”!

As early as 2002, she obtained a permanent teaching position at the University of Manchester in the UK. To this day, "Joe's concept" is still circulating in the international robotics field, but when she became famous, she waved her hand, threw away all olive branches and returned to China to form a team to lead domestic robots on the road to take-off. "Our country is in a critical historical period of development and growth. It is a Chinese's responsibility and honor to serve the motherland after learning." This sentence came from Qiao Hong, who was elected as an academician of the Information Technology Science Department of the Chinese Academy of Sciences in 2021.

Qiao Hong

Homecoming

No matter when, Qiao Hong always looks calm and dignified, with a radiant intelligence between her brows. This is the result of her years of hard work and the charm of being born in a scholarly family.

Qiao Hong was born in a typical intellectual family in the 1960s. Both of her parents were professors at Xi'an Jiaotong University, which later became Qiao Hong's alma mater. In 1989, Qiao Hong graduated from Xi'an Jiaotong University with a master's degree in computer science and technology, and then went to study in the UK.

At that time, Qiao Hong, who had “not liked red clothes and preferred machines” since childhood, formed her own ideas more firmly after opening up the international perspective, that is, an important trend in the future development of robots is to become closer and closer to biological beings, “they will not only be cold machines, but should have a series of human-like characteristics including cognition, emotions, logic, and actions”. This cognition was externalized by her in the early days as the “environmental attraction domain” method in robot operation, and it was through this that she emerged internationally and became famous - international journals directly reported this theory as “Qiao’s concept”.

But what no one expected was that when Qiao Hong won a permanent teaching position and everything went smoothly under the brilliance of wisdom, she turned her attention to the robot market in her motherland. She found that the domestic robot research was still in its infancy, so she took the initiative to move towards a greater challenge - in 2004, she officially gave up her overseas teaching position and returned to China to join the Institute of Automation of the Chinese Academy of Sciences as a researcher.

Now, 20 years later, Qiao Hong is still exploring the cross-integration of robotics and neuroscience. She has established a team and has taken the lead in long-term research on the "hand-eye-brain" of robots, that is, the control of manipulators, the application and integration of robot vision and brain-like artificial intelligence.

In January 2024, Qiao Hong, who has passed the age of 50, appeared in front of the camera again, introducing her "new identity" to everyone in a dignified and generous manner, that is, the director of the Expert Committee of the Beijing Humanoid Robot Innovation Center. At the same time, she said: "Helping to solve the bottleneck of the industry is the driving force that supports my progress. Facing the wave of embodied intelligence, my team and I must improve the comprehensive strength of our country's robots in this great revolution of artificial intelligence and make our robots at the forefront of the world."

Qiao Hong accepted media interviews

Innovation

In just one month, Qiao Hong made her wish come true. In February 2024, the humanoid robot research team of the Institute of Automation of the Chinese Academy of Sciences, led by Qiao Hong, independently announced the development of a humanoid robot design and assembly "big factory" (referred to as "big factory"), which can automatically complete the selection of humanoid robot hardware AI design solutions and software algorithms, and quickly verify them in a high-precision environment, greatly shortening the existing R&D cycle.

Based on the original innovation accumulation of high-precision operation in the "environmental attraction domain" and brain-like intelligent robot theory, the "big factory" has independently made breakthroughs in core technologies such as high-explosive integrated joints, AI-enabled design, large robot models, and humanoid compliant control. This is like a large model full of robot manufacturing knowledge and principles. You only need to tell the large model what kind of humanoid robot you want, and it will generate the best design and manufacturing plan based on your needs and usage scenarios. At the same time, supported by receiving massive feedback data, the "big factory" will continue to optimize the robot.

Among them, the most vivid and successful example is the Q series of humanoid robots developed by the humanoid robot research team of the Institute of Automation, Chinese Academy of Sciences, which will be unveiled in 2024.

The Q1 bionic high-dynamic robot adopts an ostrich-like low-inertia structure design, which enables accurate tracking and balance control of the robot's entire body posture. In the video, the robot can calmly perform actions that require high precision, such as archery, pouring water, and charging a mobile phone.

The Q2 multi-terrain adaptive robot achieves adaptive and stable motion in various complex terrains indoors and outdoors. The robot adopts the "finite element analysis + topology optimization" design, and achieves high real-time control through observer kernel cutting. The robot can still maintain its original motion state when facing unconventional terrain.

The Q3 high-burst motion robot realizes the robust control of batch robots and the ability to adapt to different environments. The Q3 robot adopts a safety design that decouples the functional structure from the support structure. Through the integration of knowledge engineering and AI high-precision modeling, it is trained and developed for outdoor scene application needs such as farmland operations and field patrols.

The Q4 brain-like intelligent robot is dedicated to revealing the brain, body structure, and operating mechanism of higher animals, and using robots to reproduce the intelligent behavior of higher animals. It is a "popular science robot". From neural circuits to muscle activation, Q4 simulates human mechanisms, structures, and functions, and achieves highly compliant and high-speed movement of redundant and coupled systems.

The Q5 high-concurrency reasoning robot is a first-person robotic embodied intelligent entity that imitates humans from the principles of the brain, cerebellum, and central nervous system, enabling it to have human intelligence, action, and coordination capabilities, providing important support for smart factory operations and family life services.

Qiao Hong takes a photo with the Q series robot

"A robot's hands should be dexterous, its feet should be sensitive, its eyes should be bright, and its brain should be smart. Most importantly, its hands, feet, eyes, and brain should be highly integrated. However, such robots are still expensive. Therefore, I hope that in the future we can solve such technical barriers, break the bottleneck of my country's robot manufacturing industry, and enable our country's industrial robots to stand firmly on the international stage!" This is Qiao Hong's wish, and it is also the source of power that keeps her moving forward.