Meet Wenwei Huang, Software Developer, Hong Kong
Wenwei is responsible for designing the software management tools that enable Hanson robots to learn to speak, hear and chat with other people.
Check out his video here:
What was the moment you knew you’d made the right decision to work here?
I like robots, but I have never thought that I would work at a company that makes robots. When I first saw the gimbal mechanics of the neck, and the complex linkages in the head, and heard the harmonic beeping from the motors, it felt so futuristic and thought I want to work here.
What was your best day at work?
As a small company trying to solve the most challenging problems in AI and robotics, it feels like every day we have some new challenges to solve. I would spend days making the speech recognition work, or trying to solve the problem that the robot was hearing and responding to itself from its speaker. The most challenging issue for me is the conversation. How does the robot get people’s intent of speech right, and how do you make the robot talk like a human? One of my best days at work was an internal R&D demo day. I had spent one month working out a new dialog system, and it worked nicely.
What’s something that happened that can only happen here?
We believe robots will eventually come to life in the future. Our mission is to build them for the future. We have crazy creative, hard-working, and smart people working toward that goal. As we keep improving the robots, they are evolving with us.
What are you most proud of?
I’m most proud of the fact that the team always pushes the boundaries, and we make the impossible possible. For example, there was a TV shooting in China for Sophia recently. The day before Sophia was being shipped back to Hong Kong from the U.S. But the mechanical arms were left behind due to logistics problems. It didn’t look like the arms would arrive in time for the shoot. But, our team rose to the challenge. Like a crazy rally race, the team in the U.S. drove the arms to the closest airport late at night and took the next flight to Hong Kong and then to China. The arms arrived just before the shoot was scheduled to start.
There are many people who go above and beyond at Hanson Robotics every day to make every one of Sophia’s performances successful.
Photo and video credits: Hanson Robotics Limited
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