Tech savvies' views on China's AI 'fever'

Visitors watch robots dancing during the 2016 World Robot Conference in Beijing, Oct 20, 2016. [Photo/Xinhua]

4. Statistics from the International Federation of Robotics (IFR) show that the market demand for service robots will boom in the next three years, with the market scale reaching $46 billion, up more than 6 times than that in 2015. What's your expectation on service robots market, and how do you see the products categories that reserve high potentials in the market?

"Medical assistant robots, elderly-care robots and education assistant robots will be some of the core segment markets in the future," said Zhuang Yongjun.

Yu Kai said that vehicles, home appliances and toys would become more intelligent as the functions of human-machine interactions get improved and the abilities of robots' processing and language expressions being upgraded.

He expects the motoring and home appliances industry will become a pioneer in the AI market and some of the other scenarios in entertaining and public security sectors also reserve big potentials.

"The core issue that service robots, such as robotic vacuums, elderly-care companion robots or educational robots, are trying to solve is to help human beings to deal with something that they are not able to do or have no time to do," said Li Shipeng. "The shape of the machine will not only be decorated as a humanoid. Apple's Siri, Microsoft's Cortana are also recognized as service robots.

"A robot able to solve everything doesn't exit and users have a variety of demands, so the market will be a niche market with a huge scale," Li added.