China robotics company looks abroad to woo commercial users

Shenzhen's Qihan Technology is looking to get a piece of the robotics market by selling a robot as a service rather than directly to consumers. Qihan has previously been known for its various security cameras, which the company advertised on Global Sources for six years as a verified supplier. More recently, however, the company has been showing off its Sanbot robot, a version of which was awarded an Analyst’s Choice in August. Digital Trends also got a closer look at the new model. The website reported Qihan intends to sell Sanbot for about $5,000, and the machine is designed for commercial use. Qihan wants to use Sanbot to tap into markets such as health care, education and security, and the robot has open APIs to help developers work toward this purpose. .

At first glance, Sanbot looks very similar to other robots coming out of China. It includes a tablet in the chest to allow users to interact and control the robot, and it has an expressive face to make users feel at ease with interacting with a humanoid machine. Sanbot also has many sophisticated features not found in most China-made robots. It has three cameras in its forehead to allow for 3D imaging. This enables the robot to better identify what gestures a user makes. Sanbot also has seven microphones to pick up speech from anywhere in a room and gets around on three sets of three spinner wheels on the bottom.

Sanbot likewise includes a high-luminance projector as a nice perk. The projector can display a 720-pixel image up to 65 inches diagonally and can adjust up to 37 degrees both upward and downward. Since the robot is designed for commercial use, the projector might be useful in a setting like a conference room. All this is powered by a 20Ah battery, giving Sanbot four hours of activity or 20 hours of standby.

One thing Sanbot struggles with right now is recognizing English, but Digital Trends said Qihan is working with Google and Amazon to improve that. It already partnered with Baidu to get a handle on Chinese speech recognition. Google and Amazon are two of the best companies working on artificial intelligence, so Qihan is looking in the right place if it wants to expand outside China. It should be interesting to see if the company has the impact on the market that it hopes to. Nevertheless, Sanbot is certainly one of the more impressive robots to come out of China in a while.