Beijing E-Town accelerates the construction of a national robotics industry innovation hub

X: @the_news_21

Beijing, China: Recently, at the press conference for the 2024 World Robot Conference (WRC 2024), it was announced that Beijing Economic-Technological Development Area (BDA or Beijing E-Town) will focus on key segments of the industrial chain, intensify efforts in tackling critical technologies, implement 50 demonstration projects for application scenarios, launch a series of “Robotics+” application demonstrations, expand typical application scenarios, and accelerate the construction of a national robotics industry innovation hub.

“Technological breakthroughs are the driving force of industrial development,” said Wang Lei, a member of the Party Working Committee and Deputy Director of the Administrative Committee of BDA.

Beijing E-Town is committed to supporting critical technological advancements, focusing on key segments of the robotics industry chain. It supports eco-friendly enterprises in collaborating with universities and research institutes to establish common technology platforms, enhancing the platforms’ capabilities in common technology research and application services.

Additionally, Beijing E-Town supports upstream and downstream enterprises in the industrial chain in jointly tackling product challenges and building production lines, fostering simultaneous growth in various types of robots, including those for healthcare, special purposes, and logistics.

Particularly in the field of humanoid robots, E-Town is leveraging the leadership role of the “One Center”—the Embodied Intelligence Robotics Innovation Center—to establish a high-level innovation center.

This center is supported in its collaboration with major research institutions and upstream and downstream enterprises in the industry chain, driving key technological breakthroughs in areas such as humanoid robot prototypes, general-purpose humanoid robot models, motion control systems, toolchains, open-source operating systems, and developer communities. In April of this year, the center released “Tiangong,” a self-developed general-purpose humanoid robot platform, and achieved the world’s first anthropomorphic running by a full-size, all-electric humanoid robot.

Wang Lei further explained that E-Town is focusing on expanding typical application scenarios, enabling the orderly deployment of robots across various industries and fields. It will implement 50 demonstration projects for application scenarios, launch a series of “Robotics+” application demonstrations, and accelerate the formation of iconic scenarios, services, models, and formats. This will drive the specific demonstration and application of robots in intelligent manufacturing, education, training, healthcare, elderly care, and safety emergency response scenarios.

Previously, E-Town released a plan to build a city-wide artificial intelligence hub, according to which it will launch the construction of ten benchmark application scenarios including “AI + Healthcare,” “AI + Transportation,” and “AI + Humanoid Robots,” and promote the incubation, city-wide application, and comprehensive empowerment of AI technologies.

Moreover, E-Town will also focus on promoting industrial clustering and strengthening the guarantee of key elements. “We are elevating the level of ‘One Park’ by leveraging the 250,000-square-meter E-Town Robotics Industrial Park to host key projects in the robotics field, attracting upstream and downstream ‘Robotics+’ enterprises to settle,” Wang Lei said.

Additionally, E-Town will activate the roles of “One Fund,” “One Group of Platforms,” and “One Cluster of Talents,” such as establishing a 10-billion-yuan government-guided investment fund to support the continued development of robotics enterprises. The BDA will also establish high-level innovation platforms, and fully utilize urban renewal spaces and vacant industrial land to create a robotics industry expansion zone and meet the needs of large-scale production.

Furthermore, E-Town will cultivate high-level industry talents, support leading robotics enterprises in enhancing industry-education integration, and enhance the training of highly skilled robotics talents.

Through a series of strategic deployments, E-Town is now home to over a hundred robotics ecosystem enterprises, half of which are specialized and innovative enterprises. It has attracted leading humanoid robot companies such as Ubtech and key robotics component companies like SMC, with a production scale nearing 10-billion-yuan, accounting for about half of the city’s robotics industry.

This has essentially formed a full robotics industry chain covering chips, operating systems, core components, complete machines, and application scenarios. “We will accelerate the construction of a domestically leading and internationally advanced robotics industry cluster, creating a ‘Beijing model’ for the innovation and development of the robotics industry,” Wang Lei stated.