Racing, mechanical transformation, fighting for justice, Transformers has always been the childhood idol of countless people, and also the enlightenment of countless technology fans on mechanical technology. Even Musk couldn’t resist the fatal attraction of Transformers, not only naming the humanoid robot launched by Tesla “Optimus Prime”, but even asserting that “these humanoid robots are more marketable than electric cars, and in the future they will be manually owned.” But this time, a consumer robotics company to go faster, before Musk’s “Optimus Prime” has not yet landed, their team has produced a depth of restoration of the Transformers hero image appearance completely replicated Transformers, and can run and fight the small bipedal robot.
On May 25th, ROBOSEN Robotics (hereinafter referred to as “ROBOSEN”), a consumer robotics brand, held a new product launch event with the theme of “Make Life More Fun” at the Lanjing Art Center in Beijing. At the conference, ROBOSEN launched three consumer-grade entertainment robots, including ROBOSEN Buzz Lightyear, ROBOSEN Bumblebee G1 Performance Edition, ROBOSEN Optimus Prime “Rise of the Super Warriors” Exquisite Series Robot, and two ROBOSEN Smart Bases.
In addition to the new Optimus Prime and Bumblebee robots that are “handsome and eye-catching”, what’s even more remarkable is that at the launch event, Loxson announced for the first time its four core robotics technologies, as well as three key artificial intelligence technologies. The famous Japanese mechanical designer Masaru Kawamori, who has created such classic works as “Super Space Fortress” and “High Intelligence Equation”, has also officially joined Loxson as a “Product Creation Partner”, and he said, “In the future, we will combine our own ideas on robotics and AI to develop new AI robots and AI robot content together with Loxson”. What is certain is that at a time when it is worthwhile to introduce AI in any industry, the passion for intelligent upgrading of the robotics industry has also been ignited, and it is time for consumer-grade robots to break the monolithic path of fighting for IPs, and add more to the technical capabilities.
1. Classic IP into reality
As early as 5 years ago, Lexon had a close relationship with Hasbro, and in 2021, Lexon Optimus Prime and Lexon Optimus Prime Carriage Kit were launched, which immediately opened up global awareness. This time around, Lexon has also chosen to partner with Hasbro to launch two newly created Transformers robots – the Lexon Optimus Prime Rise of the Super Warriors Exquisite Series Robot and the Lexon Bumblebee G1 Performance Edition. It is worth noting that, although LeSports has already launched a variety of robots in the image of Optimus Prime, the Exquisite Series Edition is the world’s first robot that deeply restores the image of Optimus Prime in the movie “Transformers: Rise of the Warriors”, and it is also the industry’s first collectible entertainment robot based on the movie’s hero IP for the first time by LeSports.
The main reason why Loxson is “out of the loop” in the industry is that it combines people’s feelings for the Transformers IP with the technological power of its own robots, so just by looking at the new Optimus Prime robot’s “collector-grade” title, we know that the product Loxson is launching this time is not a simple one. As expected, the moment Optimus Prime’s “Rise of the Super Warriors” exquisite series of robots were unveiled at the launch event, many audience members couldn’t help but take pictures and said, “Childhood screen heroes and idols have come into reality! The image of the new Optimus Prime robot is highly reproduced, the whole body is painted in different colors, and every detail has been finely etched and meticulously painted, truly realizing movie-level detail reproduction. In order to fit the movie image more closely, Leeson has even applied “old paint” to the robot to replicate the traces left by the characters in the movie when they fought.
But if it’s just a detailed reproduction of the “appearance”, then in fact, well-made figures can also do it, and what’s great about Leeson is that it makes Optimus Prime and Bumblebee “move”. When I talked to robotics practitioners before, one of the facts they would generally mention is that “compared with wheeled robots, quadruped and hexapod robots, the gait technology of bipedal robots is much more difficult to master”, which is also the reason why we seldom see bipedal robots on the ground in specific scenarios. The advantage of Lesen is that as early as 2019, it has taken the lead in overcoming the development technology of humanoid bipedal form, support for programming and deformable robots, and after several years of technological evolution, the new robot is able to flexibly make the classic shapes in animation and movies.
To Loxson launched the Bumblebee G1 performance version, for example, this product is equipped with 17 self-developed high-precision electric robot intelligent joints, a six-axis attitude sensor, 45 microchips, upgraded adaptive gait algorithm, the robot’s bipedal walking more flexible, and walking speed adjustable in two steps. Supported by the technical force, Bumblebee has rich movements such as “bipedal walking”, “kicking” and “stretching”, which reproduces the friendly and humorous side of Bumblebee in the animation. Users can also create a dance, a martial art and other personalized movements through handwriting and module graphic programming to experience the fun of customization; and through the robot’s App system, it can also realize two different scenarios of the robot’s one-man show and multi-character theater performance mini-theater.
2. From IP robot to AI intelligent robot
At the press conference, Loxson said it would further expand its cooperation with Hasbro to create more Transformers IP hero robots. But while Leeson’s IP robots have been well-received and have proven the success of the “Robot + IP” path, Leeson doesn’t intend to stop there.
After more than 10 years of exploration and research and development, in terms of robotics technology system, Loxson has formed several core technologies, including high-dimensional constraint equation deformation structural design, multi-dimensional alloy, heterogeneous high-precision intelligent joints, and bipedal adaptive control algorithms. It is these somewhat awkward-sounding technologies that not only ensure that the robot has excellent performance such as high strength and high toughness, but also possesses superb motion capability and structural stability, ensuring a good interaction experience.
Now, after the robotics technology has made a breakthrough in stages, Loxson is finally determined to make a push towards AI intelligent robots. Every year, a large number of robotics companies get financing, but every year there are also a large number of robotics companies disappear because they can’t find specific landing scenes. In the field of robotics, in the past, the most widely used, can really solve the problem of most of the robotic arm, logistics robots, storage robots and other industrial robots do not have a human form, consumer-grade robots are in a slightly embarrassing situation.
Loxson believes that intelligence should have been part of the robot, with the progress of science and technology and the continuous development of artificial intelligence technology, “robot + AI + IP resulting in a new product form, will become a new species of family in the era of artificial intelligence, a new partner”. What many people don’t know is that Loxson has actually accumulated artificial intelligence, such as active-passive full-duplex voice interaction technology based on visual presentation, conversation content generation technology based on large language model for IP universe, and robot intelligent movement content generation technology based on AIGC. These technologies are precisely the key to give Loxson’s robots the ability to interact with multiple characters in a three-dimensional anthropomorphic way, so that the robots can have the same cognition, expression and movement as humans.
In the future picture of robots depicted by Loxson, a humanoid robot standing on the desktop can actively greet and talk to you when you come home, and can also establish an exclusive communication style based on your interests …… In order to make the above scenarios become a reality, Loxson is actively exploring the technological practice of “Robotics + AI”. At present, the supporting products built by Loxson based on the intelligent series, “Loxson Intelligent Base” and “Loxson Intelligent Base Lite”, have also begun internal testing, and the “three-dimensional anthropomorphic experience” based on the two Intelligent Bases (to create an interactive experience of the home entertainment scene through robotic hardware + AI Intelligence) has begun inviting tests, and the official version is expected to be formally unveiled in the third quarter of this year.