The Beating Heart of Robotics in Beijing

Mark Karanja Jingkids

If ideas espoused in sci-fi films fill you with fear, then being alive at this particular time in history must be a living nightmare for you. Robocop and all the quaint ideas of 90’s sci-fi are neither quaint nor are they mere ideas. Establishments all across countries like Japan have begun employing real life robots for everything from serving in restaurants to caring for the elderly. China employs Artificial Intelligence at ports of entry to eliminate the need for long queues at customs. A year or so ago, a team at the BBC carried out a radical experiment in conjunction with Chinese police to see just how long it would take to find a “criminal” in one of China’s highly populated mega-cities. The results were an astonishing seven minutes, thanks to a complex system of face recognition AI technology woven into the very fabric of everyday Chinese life.

The future is certainly now, and one of those leading the charge into this brilliant AI future is Sotirios Stasinopoulos, co-founder and CEO of Popular Robotics. Stasinopoulos, a native of Greece, came to Beijing over nine years ago to pursue two of his passions – the Chinese language and robotics. “I did my undergrad in Electrical & Computer Engineering and my Master’s degree in Computer Vision in Athens, Greece, where I am from, and I moved to Beijing in 2011 to do an internship and continue studying Chinese, something that I had started as a hobby back in Greece, but was really interested in. A year after that, I started my PhD in Robotics and Automation in Tsinghua University,” recounts Stasinopoulos. And like many Chinese university educated expats in China, he decided to stay on, working for a leading robotics company – UBTech Robotics – before venturing out and starting his own business.

Talking about AI is all well and good, but what exactly are robots? I will admit to have a whimsical idea of what a robot is, and it is a cross between the Transformers and Rosie the robot maid from the Sixties cartoon The Jetsons. “Robotics is the study of the design, construction, operation, and use of robots. Robots are machines that can be used to perform tasks, either by people controlling them, or by accomplishing them by themselves, autonomously,” explains Stasinopoulos. “Robots are a combination of their mechanical bodies and the software/programs that make these mechanical bodies move, analyze their environments, and perform tasks. Robotics entails different disciplines such as: mathematics, physics, biology, mechanical engineering, electrical and electronic engineering, computer science, artificial intelligence, and automation technology, including sensors, controllers, etc. All of these are needed to create the systems that a robot needs in order to operate.”

If that still sounds rather daunting to wrap your head around, it is understandable. It might also be one of the reasons why kids fear entering into the world of not only engineering, but that of robotics. This field still remains a mystery for those interested, with there being a wealth of information online but rarely any direct way in which to experiment.

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“Traditionally, the first contact with robotics would happen during some university courses in undergrad majors, such as electrical/computer/mechanical engineering, automation, or others. But the knowledge would be on a more theoretical level and more hands-on experience would be gained in a subsequent Master’s and PhD degree in Robotics. In recent years, with the advent of online education and the availability of more resources for self-learning, but also because of the progress of AI technology, students have access to hands-on robotics education from younger ages.” Such has been the situation according to Stasinopoulos, until recently, when he and other like-minded engineers hosted robotics camps with an aim to offer this much needed hands-on experience to the younger generation.

China, as a nation, has set itself apart as a leader in this field, constantly producing some of the top engineering minds globally, while offering conducive and competitive programs to both encourage creativity and innovation. And yet, a concern held all around the world about demographics within fields under the wide umbrella of hard sciences cannot be escaped. Despite a growth in numbers in the participation of female engineers in the promising field of robotics, they still make up a marginal 30 percent of the total. “We still have a lot of a work to do towards this direction and it needs to start from a young age. Young girls should be encouraged to explore more engineering-related projects, and building machines and robots should not only be considered as a thing boys should enjoy,” advises Stasinopoulos.

And on how to get kids into engineering and robotics, Stasinopoulos has a few words of wisdom: “An engineering way of thinking, which is the basis of robotics, can be cultivated from an early age, by taking part in classes that encourage kids to analyze how things are built and assembled, but also the reason why they were built this way along with the function that their structure serves. But also, classes that give them the creative freedom to build their own devices to accomplish specific tasks, not limiting their imaginations. If that creative spark is ignited from a young age, it can help a lot in kids having the curiosity and resourcefulness to take on engineering problems and figure out solutions. Afterwards, parents should expose kids to programming and robotics courses from an age that they can be computer literate, meaning from when they can start handling computers on their own. There are different levels of difficulty in coding skills that fit different ages, but students can be introduced to simpler coding types from as young as 5-6 years old. Students 5-10 years are best suited to use more visual, block-based programming tools, such as Scratch or Blockly, whereas 10-year-old students and above could begin to study more complex programming languages, such as Python or C/C++, which are closer to the ones used in real professional environments. Parents can expose their kids to workshop series or camps that teach these skills and keep some continuity in this sort of education in order to build their kids’ capabilities, but also their confidence that robotics is something they can accomplish, not just for PhD experts.”

Whether or not this feels digestible or still feels quite daunting a topic to wrap one’s head around, it is an inescapable fact that Artificial Intelligence is not just a fad, but the future of innovation. Panic-stricken individuals across the world worry about being rendered redundant by automation of certain industries, but this should not be worth worrying about in the event that we encourage our children to not only familiarize themselves with the inner workings of the industry, but to explore and grow their talents as rapidly as the industry itself is evolving. “AI applications are already finding their ways into tasks we perform on an everyday basis, and although only some low level robots, such as robot floor sweepers and hotel delivery robots, have found their ways to consumer environments for now, in the following three to five years more task-specific robots will make consumers’ lives easier, and we have the first multi-tasking robot assistants in nine to ten years from now. With the continuous progress of AI, these robots will be able to intelligently perform tasks while integrating into our existing environments. This revolution will happen globally, but countries like China are definitely in the forefront of developing such intelligent robots,” admits Stasinopoulos. Simply put, China is ground zero for this next step of such innovation.

Stasinopoulos is just one among several brilliant minds directly involved in mentoring and training kids in the field of robotics. “We have organized workshops in Beijing No.4 High School International Campus and RDFZ – 人大附中- Chaoyang International High School, and have been providing our courses as an ASA for the International Montessori School of Beijing (MSB) since September 2019, while starting a new cooperation from next semester with Beanstalk International Bilingual School (BIBS). The mode of cooperation with these schools has been in two distinct ways: we provide a teacher and the content for the ASA courses, or we train their teachers to be able to teach the courses based on the content on our online platform Robociti and the accompanying robotic hardware we provide. We are very eager to work with even more international schools in 2020,” says Stasinopoulos. The future is indeed promising in the world of robotics. As schools continue to embrace it as a necessary subject, schoolkids will undoubtedly turn our sci-fi nightmares into a beautiful futuristic AI reality.

Photos: courtesy of Sotirios Stasinopoulos, jain.software,

Mental Floss, smashingrobotics.com,

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