Rebirth 08: Rise from copycat phones

Chapter 513 LSP's Dream: Simulated Robot

As the Yun Robot S4 robots drove a row of sea-blue cars into the venue, they got off the cars one after another and stood in a row, attracting the curiosity and amazement of many people present.

Xu Shenxue also appeared at the entrance of the venue!
"Welcome to the Zhiyun-HaiLan joint press conference. I am your old friend Xu Shenxue!"

"Do you see these people behind me who look exactly the same? You guessed it right, they are all robots. Zhiyun's latest robot product: Yun Robot S4, has a top-level computing chip that can provide it with abundant computing resources."

"We use the most advanced EYQ5 chip based on the -nanometer process for it. This is the top terminal computing chip at the moment!"

"At the same time, we also equipped the S4 robot with a ZY38 ultra-large-scale data processing chip that is also manufactured based on the seven-nanometer process."

"The combination of these two chips can provide our robots with the most abundant computing power!"

"Of course, sufficient computing power also requires excellent sensor equipment to support it!"

"Our S4 robot has the most outstanding sensor equipment available today, including laser radar, ultrasonic radar, high-definition camera, infrared camera and other sensor equipment. We have significantly upgraded them!"

"Especially the lidar as the main sensor. The lidar on our S4 robot this year has a huge update, adopting the aviation-grade BK98 lidar system for the first time."

When talking about the BK98 laser radar system, Xu Shenxue said a lot of great things about this laser radar on the stage, such as its maximum detection distance of one kilometer.

Within a range of 3 meters, combined with the blind spot filling of electronic scanning solid-state laser radar, the robot can build an ultra-high-precision real-time D map within meters.

When Xu Shenxue was bragging about the BK98 lidar system, many people in the industry felt helpless.

Among the companies under Xu Shenxue, the one that has a huge lead in the field of laser radar!

In the field of LiDAR, HaiLan Laser, a subsidiary of HaiLan Auto, is currently the undisputed global leader, far ahead of other LiDAR companies and its technology is at least several generations ahead!
The world's first commercial laser radar was made by Hai Lan Laser, the world's first hybrid solid-state radar was made by Hai Lan Laser, and the world's first optical phased array solid-state laser radar and electronic scanning solid-state laser radar were also made by Hai Lan Laser.

Every year, almost every two years, Hailan Automobile's high-end models will have a wave of laser radar upgrades!

While other LiDAR companies were still working on mechanically scanned 64-line LiDARs, Hailan Laser had already completed the research and development of optical phased array solid-state LiDARs and installed them on vehicles. The number of lines increased dramatically from 128 to 512.

By the way, we also developed an electronic scanning solid-state laser radar, which is also very good and at the world's top level. However, this electronic scanning laser radar is still a little lacking. It is currently mainly used as a blind spot radar rather than as a long-range main radar.

There are many types of laser radars, including low-end mechanical scanning laser radars, hybrid semi-solid laser radars, and fully solid-state laser radars. There are many technical routes, and the number of lines ranges from dozens to thousands.

For example, the solid-state radar based on the optical phased array technology route is commonly used in Hailan smart electric vehicles. The low-end version of ordinary models uses 256 lines, and the high-end models use 512 lines. This optical phased array solid-state radar is used as the main long-range radar;
However, it also uses a solid-state radar with electronic scanning technology as a medium and short-range blind spot radar.

In addition, some 64-line, 128-line, and 196-line optical phased array solid-state radars or electronic scanning solid-state radars are also in production, but they are not used by themselves and are supplied to external parties.

In fact, not only these mid- and low-end products are sold externally, but even the 512-line optical phased array solid-state radar used in Hailan Automobile's high-end models is also sold... The problem is that most customers cannot afford this kind of high-end product, and the external selling price of a single piece is almost yuan.

Again, not all electric cars can sell for hundreds of thousands and still sell well!
However, they cannot afford the high-end radar of Hailan Laser, but they can still afford the mid- and low-end laser radars, which range from a few thousand yuan to tens of thousands of yuan, and customers can choose whatever they want.

Therefore, many domestic and foreign manufacturers' laser radars on electric vehicles actually use Hailan Laser's mid- and low-end laser radars!
Of course, this is also related to Zhiyun Group, a global supplier of intelligent driving technology solutions... The comprehensive intelligent driving solutions provided by Zhiyun Group to major automobile manufacturers, namely the EYEQ series chips and the accompanying autonomous driving technology, were pure vision solutions in the early days.

Later, the new product introduced a laser radar + vision hybrid solution!

The EYEQ solution is an algorithm chip, algorithm, laser radar, and camera that are sold directly as a package. Customers can buy them and use them after simple adaptation.

Currently, EYEQ is the only global supplier of assisted driving solutions, and all major traditional car companies in the world are its customers. Functions such as lane keeping and cruise control in major car brands are actually based on the EYEQ solution.

Similarly, many car companies have also used the EYEQ solution in smart electric vehicles. High-end models often use this laser radar and vision hybrid solution, which can provide quite good L2++ assisted driving capabilities.

As for L3 level autonomous driving technology, Zhiyun does not have it now. The early autonomous driving technology has been transferred to Hailan Automobile, but Hailan does not sell autonomous driving technology!
The large-scale supply of EYEQ solutions has also boosted the shipments of many mid- and low-end lidars of Hailan Laser... There is no other way. They don’t sell chips or algorithms, but provide a complete set of technical solutions. If you want to use Zhiyun Group’s EYEQ intelligent driving technology solution, you can only buy the whole set.

Under such circumstances, Hailan Laser's foreign sales of mid- and low-end lidars are also increasing year by year.

All of the above-mentioned laser radars, whether for self-use or for external sales, are just conventional laser radars. In fact, they do not represent Hailan Laser's top technology.

The most advanced one among Hailan Laser is the BT series of all-solid-state laser radar. The abbreviation is very interesting. When the technical research and development of this laser radar was completed, some people lamented that this laser radar was too abnormal... So, BT became the model prefix of this series of laser radars!
However, the BT series laser radar was developed for the aviation field and is used for defense projects to support AI drones. It has nothing to do with civilian use, so various performance indicators are very high, and cost issues are not considered much...

There is a sense of disregarding everything for the sake of performance.

Its performance characteristics are that it can see far, with a detection distance of up to three kilometers, and it can see very clearly, even small pits a thousand meters away can be detected.

It is not the same as the various consumer-grade lidars commonly found on many cars on the market.

Another more important feature of the BT series of laser radars is that they are expensive. In the early days of this type of laser radar, the price of a single unit was hundreds of thousands... This is not the selling price, but the cost price.

According to normal business logic, if this type of laser radar is sold externally, each unit would cost at least a million yuan. It would be normal for someone to sell it for several million yuan if they were a little bit unscrupulous.

Many national defense projects are like this, regardless of cost!

After all, this high-performance laser radar is one of the important sensors for AI fighter jets to perform low-altitude maneuvers, and it is indispensable.

This thing combined with ultra-high-definition cameras, infrared cameras, and phased array radars allows fighter jets to perform high-speed dives half a meter above the ground and ultra-low-altitude supersonic maneuvers.

Without this thing, we will lack the crucial real-time 3D map!

AI fighter jets are not just about computing power, but also about collecting sensor data!
Only with the sensing data can the airborne artificial intelligence do the calculations... Thanks to the unsparing research on lidar in the defense field, Hailan Laser has made a technological breakthrough. Later, Hailan Laser continued its research on the BT series lidar.

While researching more advanced performance, we are also researching lower costs!

LiDARs with more advanced performance are naturally prepared for various national defense projects... As one of the top LiDAR R&D companies in China and the world, Hailan Laser has the responsibility and obligation to tackle technical problems in the field of national defense.

Lower-cost, high-performance lidar is used in civilian products.

Hailan Laser Line first made a low-end version of the BK96 laser radar and used it on the X14 low-altitude UAV. However, this BK96 laser radar is still very expensive. The X14 low-altitude UAV, which sells for tens of millions, can certainly afford it, but don’t count on it for products such as cars and robots.

So they continued research and development to reduce costs, and finally Hailan Laser came up with a super beggar version of the BK98 laser radar... Now the cost of a single unit has finally been reduced to less than yuan, and some higher-priced civilian consumer terminals, such as cars and robots, can afford it.

The Robot S4 is one of the first vehicles to be equipped with the BK98 laser radar... Of course, there is also the Hailan SR3 next to it.

Xu Shenxue gave a relatively detailed introduction to the BK98 laser radar at the opening of the press conference... This laser radar is the core sensor component in the intelligent robot, and its performance is directly related to the performance of the robot.

The people present were not shocked at all, they just sighed... Xu Shenxue just took out a high-performance laser radar, so there was nothing strange about it.

Although the performance is very powerful, that's all. It can't be considered as black technology and it can't bring any shock to people.

After all, laser radar is nothing new. HaiLan Automobile had already installed it on its cars in 12.

Everyone is already used to it.

There is also the EYQ5 chip. Everyone is drooling at the sight of this thing, but there is nothing you can do even if you are drooling. The EYQ series of general-purpose terminal computing chips have never been sold to the public. They are currently only used in Hailan Automobile, Zhiyun Robotics, and X14 low-altitude drones!

In fact, in the early testing and development of AI fighter jets, multiple EYQ4 chips were used to form a computing array for testing. However, with the successful development of computing chips dedicated to the defense field based on seven-nanometer process technology, the computing chips in many defense projects now fully adopt defense-specific seven-nanometer computing chips.

After all, there is a big difference between civilian consumer chips and national defense chips!
Their defense-specific chips are manufactured without regard for cost or power consumption, and are directly manufactured using large-area silicon wafers.

Although both use the seven-nanometer process, the computing power of the defense-specific computing chip is much greater than that of the EYQ260 with a single computing power of 5TOPS... The computing power of a single chip has reached 830TOPS, and smart terminal devices in the defense field, such as the X1 fighter, still use many chips to make a computing server array!
An AI fighter jet flies in the sky carrying a computing server on its back!

Terminals like robots cannot use similar defense-specific computing chips... Not only can they not afford them, the key is that the power supply cannot keep up!
Their AI fighter jets have huge aircraft engines that generate electricity to supply various power-consuming devices such as onboard radars and computing chips.

But the small battery inside the robot is not enough to power it!

Not to mention the seven-nanometer computing chip dedicated to national defense, the EYQ5 chip has also made a group of people drool. This thing is a killer in the field of civilian consumer chips.

Not only does it have powerful computing power, but its power consumption is also very low and its area is not very large, so the area of ​​the silicon wafer used during manufacturing is not large either, and the cost can be controlled very high.

This kind of top-level terminal computing power chip makes AMD, Qualcomm, Intel and other semiconductor design companies drool. They also want to develop this kind of top-level computing power chip, but they have no idea how to do it... Even Tesla's self-developed computing power chip is better than the computing power chips made by these semiconductor design companies.

There is also a ZY38 big data processing chip, which is familiar to everyone. When the flagship virtual machine was launched before, it was already equipped with this chip.

The technical content of the ZY38 chip is higher than that of the EY5 chip and it is more complex... Even some semiconductor manufacturers outside the world have not yet figured out the design principles of this chip.

After all, Zhiyun only advertised that the ZY series chips are used for sensor data processing and are used in conjunction with general-purpose computing chips or server computing chips.

But no one tells us how to deal with it or how to use it together.

As for reverse engineering and copying after polishing... there are tens of billions of transistors, and 3D transistor technology is used. Even if you are so awesome that you can observe the transistors after polishing layer by layer, you can't even understand tens of billions of transistors, so what's the point of copying!
The hardware threshold of this thing is actually higher than that of the APO5000 graphics card!

As for the APO5000 graphics card, as we all know, it is just a high-performance GPU plus a bunch of high-speed video memory. The core GPU is not too complicated. Many semiconductor manufacturers have the ability to design GPUs, but they cannot produce GPU chips as excellent as Zhiyun Semiconductor.

Although the APO series graphics cards have excellent hardware, the software support is also very important.

However, for the ZY series chips, no one even understands the principle behind them, so they cannot be copied!
The Yun Robot S4 flagship robot, the hardware updates alone have made many people helpless and desperate... But the hardware is secondary, artificial intelligence is the core, and this is even more impossible to do.

Zhiyun Group's intelligent robots are sold all over the world, and there is no competitor so far, but there is a reason for it... Do you think big companies like Google, Fruit, and Sixin don't want to follow suit? They do want to, but the problem is that they can't do it!
Today, Zhiyun Group once again demonstrated its powerful artificial intelligence technology and played a game of robot driving!
This advanced feature left a deep impression on many people because of its shocking appearance!
But industry insiders are unmoved: they are numb!

Because of similar advanced functions, Zhiyun Group has more than 30 kinds of intelligent robots...

More than 30 advanced functional modes cover many areas such as housekeeping functions, education functions, care functions, assisted repairs, and auxiliary work.

Behind every advanced functional mode is Zhiyun Group’s extremely powerful artificial intelligence technology!
This is also what many people say, what Zhiyun Group sells is not robots, but artificial intelligence!

The focus of these industry insiders is different from that of ordinary people. They pay more attention to the things behind the technology.

But ordinary people would be shocked to see robots driving.

Then when Xu Shenxue began to introduce the robot's simulated skin and realistic expression system, more people exclaimed.

Many people immediately spotted a huge possibility: "My wife/husband is finally here!"

That’s right, when the simulated skin and the simulated expression system are combined, the highly anthropomorphic-looking robots have become the fantasy product of many male and female LSPs…

(End of this chapter)