Alibaba debuts cloud computer, delivery robot at Apsara Conference
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| Source: Alibaba Cloud. Alibaba Cloud's first cloud computer is palm-sized. |
Alibaba Cloud’s first cloud computer, a palm-sized personal computer, made its debut at the event. Weighing in at about 60 g, the cloud computer offers high-performance computing thanks to robust back-end cloud resources. By connecting the cloud computer to a standard display monitor users can access computing resources limited only by their cloud consumption budget or subscription.
“We hope our cloud computer can help people access resilient computing power whenever they need to, so they can conduct complex tasks which usually require sophisticated and powerful PCs, such as video editing, animation rendering, software development, and online customer services, with a tiny personal computer at hand now,” said Jeff Zhang, President of Alibaba Cloud Intelligence.
“As working from home becomes the new normal during and after the pandemic, we believe our innovation can also help users more easily enjoy the benefits of cloud computing anytime, anywhere, in a cost-effective yet secure way.”
With robust computing power, the cloud computer can reduce the rendering time of a single frame of high-resolution animation from 90 minutes using a traditional PC, down to 10 minutes. In addition, the cloud computer’s system upgrades are conducted online, saving on traditional upgrades and maintenance.
Through Alibaba Cloud's self-developed app-streaming protocol, which is designed for synergy between the cloud and the device, users can also purchase and access licensed software such Linux and Windows as well as various office applications. All user data will be stored on cloud for data centre-grade security and protection measures. Available initially for enterprise customers, the cloud computers will be also available for purchase by consumers in the near future.
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| Source: Alibaba Cloud. Alibaba Cloud launched a delivery robot that can cover 100 km on a single charge. | |
Alibaba Cloud also unveiled an autonomous logistics robot for last-mile deliveries. Developed by the Alibaba DAMO Academy, the global research initiative by Alibaba Group, the robot can carry 50 packages at one time and cover 100 km on a single charge. It is estimated the mobile robot should be able to deliver as many as 500 packages a day to one designated community or campus, meeting the rising demand for speedy last-mile delivery in China. Online shopping is booming there, with 200 million packages delivered daily and expectations that will rise to 1 billion packages per day in the coming years.
Supported with reinforced learning technologies, the intelligent robot can plan a route even in a crowded environment. With proprietary, high-definition positioning technology, the robot can operate even where the GPS signal is weak or non-existent. Leveraging a self-developed heterogeneous computing platform, 3D point cloud semantic segmentation (PCSS) technology and deep learning, the robot can also identify obstacles and predict the intended movement of passengers and vehicles a few seconds ahead of time to enhance safety.
“We are expecting a rapid spike of delivery demands brought by the thriving New Retail and local services businesses in the increasingly digitalised world,” added Zhang.
“To meet the strong delivery demand for our internal business growth and for the larger society, we have been investing in smart logistics, including logistics robots, for years. We are glad to launch our latest mobile delivery robot, (with) which we will support Cainiao, Alibaba’s logistics platform, to serve communities, campuses and business parks in China.
“Moving ahead, we aim to support the delivery needs of our local services businesses and leverage our technologies for other types of service robots, such as service robots in the airport and tourism guide robots in scenic spots.”
Consumers can use either the Cainiao or Taobao mobile apps to select a preferred timeslot during the day for delivery. The robot then arrives at the designated destination, where users retrieve their packages simply by entering a passcode they receive in the app, once the robot arrives.
Other cloud-native products unveiled during the conference included:
Cloud Lakehouse
This big data architecture can deliver significant data-driven value and intelligence through cross-platform computing, intelligent caching, hot and cold data tiering, storage improvement and performance acceleration. Hot data refers to data that is often required, whereas cold data is not required as often.
Sandboxed-Container 2.0
Alibaba’s cloud-native container service for Kubernetes supports clusters that provide sandboxed container runtimes. The new Sandboxed-Container 2.0 enables customers to run applications in lightweight sandboxed environments faster and with more cost-effective runtime resource utilisation.
PAI-DSW 2.0
The latest cloud-native machine-learning interactive development platform by Alibaba aims to provide an optimal environment for developers that is easy to use, compatible with community plug-ins and supports multi-development environments like JupyterLab，WebIDE and Terminal.
Lindorm
Lindorm, formerly for internal use only, is a cloud-native database with affordable storage and flexible processing capabilities. It is designed for applications with big data processing requirements and can manage a mix of unstructured, semi-structured, and structured data.
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