With just six days left until the opening of the GDPS 2025 Global Developers Pioneer Conference, the industry is buzzing with anticipation. Scheduled for December 12 in Zhangjiang, Pudong, this competition is seen as a pivotal moment for the embodied AI industry's entry into the physical world, drawing global attention and signaling an impending wave of technological transformation.
In recent years, AI has primarily operated in the digital realm. Now, embodied AI—often referred to as silicon-based life—is collectively advancing into the physical world. The GDPS competition is regarded as a landmark event in this journey, hailed by the industry as the "first ticket to the physical world."
Policy support and industrial ecosystems are crucial drivers for the embodied AI sector. Shanghai, for instance, has adopted a service-oriented approach, identifying key pain points for developers and implementing multiple measures to propel the industry forward. In terms of scenario accessibility, regions are opening up critical sectors like advanced manufacturing, healthcare, and urban governance to enterprises. For example, in unmanned factories, embodied AI robots work alongside human operators on production lines, gaining hands-on experience. In top-tier hospitals, robots interact with real patients, learning to provide medical services. In urban neighborhoods, they handle tasks like parcel delivery, inspections, and cleaning, adapting to complex environments.
To address computational bottlenecks, Shanghai has introduced innovative policies, such as "computing power vouchers," providing financial support to businesses. This initiative enables even small startups to access advanced computing resources, transforming computing power from a "luxury" into a public utility akin to water and electricity. Additionally, to tackle the scarcity of physical-world interaction data, the government is encouraging enterprises to break down data silos and build industry-wide data repositories.
Industrial clustering is also accelerating the growth of the embodied AI sector. In some robotics industrial parks, the supply chain is highly concentrated, with the "upstairs-downstairs" model significantly shortening hardware iteration cycles and boosting R&D efficiency.
The upcoming GDPS competition will serve as a comprehensive, real-world "live-fire exercise" for hundreds of global embodied AI teams. The event features tracks in industrial, service, and rescue robotics, with judges focusing solely on practical performance rather than presentations. The industrial track tests robots' hand-eye-brain coordination, the service track evaluates their ability to understand artistic nuances, and the rescue track assesses their robustness in extreme environments.
The rapid development of the embodied AI industry is gradually establishing a complete ecosystem where silicon-based life can "be born, grow, learn, and work."
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