00:00Lu Xiaoshan is Director of Embodied AI at the Shenzhen Institute of Artificial Intelligence and Robotics for Society.
00:09Well, you know, Shenzhen has been a manufacturing center for a few decades, especially on electronics.
00:15And if you notice, in the past 10 years in China, the main theme has been intelligent electric vehicles.
00:22And luckily, 80% of the components using robots actually come from intelligent electric vehicles.
00:29So Shenzhen has the very good basis and foundation for robotics, starting with electronics.
00:36Something that I find quite astonishing is that engineers in Shenzhen say they can turn a new design into a
00:43working prototype in a single day.
00:45So they design it in the morning and it's ready that same evening.
00:48It's extraordinary speed. Can quality keep up with it?
00:53Well, you know, speed first, because the guy downstairs actually is the downstream of your supply chain.
01:00So you just go downstairs one step by step, then pretty much one day you have the product.
01:05With the prototype, then you can spend more time refining its quality.
01:09So I think that's the beauty of Shenzhen.
01:11The whole supply chain is here.
01:13And then you don't have to wait for a week for a component to come back.
01:16Now, Shenzhen built its strength on hardware, the motors, the sensors, the batteries, all of those things that go inside
01:25a robot.
01:26Is it as strong on the AI that actually makes a robot useful?
01:33Well, if you look at Shenzhen, there are a few big companies, the big brothers out here.
01:38Tencent is extremely strong in software.
01:41Huawei, also very strong in software.
01:43BYD started with battery and hardware, but today it's doing great on autonomy technologies.
01:51And don't forget DJI, the drone company that started with the hardware, then moved into the autonomy domain.
01:57So gradually you started with hardware, but gradually you built up the capability.
02:02Now software is no problem.
02:04Now you work at a research institute in the heart of this ecosystem.
02:09How much of Shenzhen's success comes from companies and how much from local government and research centers like yours working
02:18together?
02:20Well, that's a great question.
02:23It started with companies.
02:25So as we discussed before, Shenzhen started decades back with manufacturing.
02:31Then the local government noticed that and that they invest heavily into this new sector.
02:36One of the investment is into research institutes.
02:40The beauty of research institutes is to bridge academia and industry so that they can convert technologies from academia into,
02:48say, open source technologies to feed the industry.
02:51So it closes the loop such that the government provides guidance and some funding for research institutes.
02:59Then research institutes then would convert academic research into industry technology.
03:05Then industry technology would then ship products overseas to global customers.
03:10Then with the resource back into the government.
03:14So I think it's a beauty if you look at Shenzhen's innovation system.
03:18Shanghai, Beijing, Hangzhou, they're all pouring money into robotics too.
03:24What would they need to do to match Shenzhen's appeal?
03:29Well, I think it takes time.
03:32Shenzhen did not come up in one day.
03:34It took decades of manufacturing to lay that foundation.
03:37I think whether it's Shanghai or Beijing or Hangzhou, they invest heavily, especially in the software domain.
03:44But it takes time to build up the whole ecosystem.
03:47I think that's the main advantage of Shenzhen is the whole hardware ecosystem.
03:53Now, some Shenzhen robot makers, like Pudu Robotics, now make more than 80% of their sales overseas.
04:00How much does Shenzhen's future depend on its links with foreign markets and foreign partners?
04:07Well, I think 100%.
04:09Actually, 100% because Shenzhen has the tradition of exporting, whether it's older generation of cell phone or older generation
04:16of MP3 players.
04:17So I think within China, you would face the involution problem because the competition is very high.
04:24But then if you face an international market, then the sky's the limit.
04:29So every single Shenzhen company that we talk to actually aiming the international market.
