Source: China Industrial Economic Information Network

“Robots are the jewel of the top of the manufacturing industry. Its R&D, manufacturing and application are important indicators for measuring the level of technological innovation and high-end manufacturing in a country.” This is the general secretary of Xi Jinping in the two chambers on June 9, 2014. A high-level overview of robots in the conference report. Since the beginning of the 21st century, the global manufacturing industry is developing towards automation, integration, intelligence and greening. As the main force of intelligent manufacturing, robot technology has become an important part of the "fourth industrial revolution" and is changing the world. The manufacturing landscape has brought about a new technological revolution.

New opportunities for robot development

In 2016, the "Robot Industry Development Plan (2016-2020)" jointly issued by the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology, the National Development and Reform Commission and the Ministry of Finance required that after five years of efforts, a relatively complete robotic industry system should be formed. At this year's Robotics Conference, Vice Premier Liu He pointed out in his speech that in recent years, the global robot industry has maintained an average annual growth rate of more than 15%, which has the potential to become a new growth point. Documents on the development of the robot industry have been introduced one after another, making people realize that China's robot industry is now in a period of vigorous development.

According to the "China Robot Industry Development Report (2018)", China's industrial robot market is developing rapidly, accounting for about one-third of the global market share, and is the world's largest industrial robot application market. According to statistics, in 2017, the sales volume of industrial robots in China reached 138,000 units, a year-on-year increase of 30%. It is expected that the sales volume will exceed 150,000 units in 2018, and the market size will reach 6.23 billion US dollars. By 2020, the domestic market will further expand to 9.35 billion US dollars.

In addition, the market size of China's service robots has expanded rapidly, becoming a bright spot in the application of the robot market. In 2018, China's service robot market is expected to reach US$1.84 billion, an increase of approximately 43.9% year-on-year, higher than the growth rate of the global service robot market. By 2020, with the rapid development of robots such as parking robots and supermarket robots, the service robot market in China is expected to exceed 4 billion US dollars.

At present, China's special robot market has maintained rapid development, and various types of products have emerged. In response to earthquakes, floods and extreme weather, as well as public safety events such as mine disasters, fires, and security, there is an outstanding demand for special robots. In 2018, China's special robot market is expected to reach 670 million US dollars, with a growth rate of 23.3%, higher than the global level. Among them, the market size of military application robots, limit operation robots and emergency rescue robots is expected to be 470 million US dollars, 150 million US dollars and 50 million US dollars respectively, and the limit operating robot is the fastest growing field. As Chinese enterprises further enhance their awareness of safety production, they will gradually use special robots to replace people in hazardous locations and hazardous environments. By 2020, the domestic market demand for special robots is expected to reach 1.07 billion US dollars.

After nearly 40 years of development, China's robotics technology has achieved breakthroughs and leapfrogging in basic research, product development, and manufacturing levels, but the gap with developed countries still exists. Only when we make unremitting efforts and catch up, Chinese robots will surely bloom the charm of Chinese manufacturing on the stage of the world robot.

Short board of China's robot industry

With the maturity of China's robot market, China's key technology breakthroughs and diversified applications have made positive progress, but it is undeniable that the market competitiveness of domestic robots is still not strong. China's robot industry must fill shortcomings and climb the value chain. Upstream, core technology is still the key.

Nowadays, around the innovative use of emerging technologies such as big data, Internet of Things and artificial intelligence, the “magical pearl of the manufacturing industry” in the robot industry is at the forefront of technological breakthroughs and industrial changes, and is becoming a new new normal under the Chinese economy. kinetic energy. According to the "2018 China Robot Industry Development Report", China's robot market has entered a period of rapid growth. In 2018, China's robot market is expected to reach 8.74 billion US dollars, with an average growth rate of 29.7% from 2013 to 2018. However, under the huge market volume, 70% of China's industrial robot market is a foreign brand, which indicates that “the performance of China's own brand products and the contradiction between high-end application requirements in key industries still exist”, domestic robots in high-end applications Absent.

“China has become the world's largest robot market since 2013. Last year, it created a new double in history: one is that the capacity of the market has reached a new height, exceeding 140,000 units. The other is that the entire growth rate has created the whole Chinese robots have developed at the highest speed in recent years, and the average growth rate has reached nearly 60%.” Qu Daokui, founder and president of Xinsong Robot Automation Co., Ltd., said that the growth of multi-joint robots in 2017 drove the Chinese robot market. The rapid development of multi-joint robots is considered to be the high-end of the robot field because of the complexity and precision of control. In China, SCARA robots and multi-joint robots still dominate the foreign brands, accounting for almost 80%.

“The challenge for Chinese suppliers is how to be able to do more complex robots,” said Karel Eloot, senior managing partner of Kensi Global, McKinsey's Asia Operations Consulting and Internet of Things, who lacks intellectual property rights in China. At present, China only holds less than 1% of industrial robot patents, and China has a relatively large share in the low-end market. There are currently more than 800 robot companies in China, but most companies focus on system integration, without their own product prototypes, and without very complex product solutions.

Breaking through core technology is a key point

Although China's self-owned brand robots have less competitiveness in high-end applications, as the industry of domestic industrial robots continues to expand, the scope of application is wider and wider, and the penetration rate is getting higher and higher. China has made breakthroughs and diversification in some key technologies. The application has made positive progress. The "2018 China Robot Industry Development Report" shows that domestic industrial robots are gradually gaining market recognition. At present, China has made breakthroughs in key core technologies of robots as an important strategy for technological development. In terms of industrial robots, domestic manufacturers have overcome some of the key problems in the field of key components such as reducers, servo controls, servo motors, and the trend of localization of core components. Gradually emerged. The application has rapidly expanded to the sub-sectors of plastics, rubber and food. After the automobile and electronics, the hardware sanitary ware and furniture household appliances have become the main application fields of domestic industrial robots. In terms of service robots, the intelligent related technologies and the international leading level are basically And running, China's technological innovation in the field of artificial intelligence is accelerating. The number of patent applications in China is on the same order of magnitude as the United States. In particular, the number of patents in application layers such as computer vision and intelligent voice has grown rapidly, which has spawned a number of innovative and entrepreneurial enterprises. In terms of special robots, policy guidance has driven the continuous advancement of the technical level of special robots, and new developments have been made in the development of special unmanned aerial vehicles and underwater robots. At present, in the field of special robots, China has initially formed a series of products such as special drones, underwater robots, search and rescue/explosive robots, and has formed advantages in some fields.

Facing the core technology of "card neck", "China Robot Industry Development Report of 2018" pointed out that China's industrial robot research and development still takes the breakthrough of the key core technology of robots as the primary goal, and the cooperation of government, industry, research and research has initially realized the domestic production of controllers. Chemical.

Breaking through core technology needs to focus

Zhao Jie, director of the Robotics Research Institute of Harbin Institute of Technology and the chief expert group of the national intelligent robots, said that the core components are only one of the core technologies of robots. The core technology is that robotics and industrial development is a systematic project. From basic frontier technologies, common key technologies, core components, core software, core components, to industrial robots and application process system solutions. Breaking through the core technology must make a comprehensive breakthrough, and need to develop synergistically, in order to promote the rapid development of China's industrial robots and the entire robot industry. He pointed out that in the future, we must transform from a market-driven to a technology-driven one, and we need to move out of this low-level and repeating situation to move toward the mid-to-high-end market.

“No matter how big the company or how powerful the product is, once the innovation is lost and the leading role is replaced, the competitors can take advantage of it. Now many of our products are in a low level of repetition. The big problem is our The ability to innovate remains to be solved.” Zhao Jie added.

At the same time, he also mentioned that companies need to break through the core technology with meditation and focus. He said: "Robots are multidisciplinary integration technologies. It is difficult to complete all the things or all in one's own hands no matter how big the company is. What we really need is to be the best in a single field. After decades of grinding a sword, focusing on the segmentation field, if every segment is well done, the entire domestic robot will also get very good development."

The next 10 years is the window of development

Since the first industrial robot in the world was launched in 1962, after more than half a century of development, robot technology has rapidly evolved and is continuously formed under the deep integration and promotion of the fields of Internet of Things, big data, cloud computing, and cognitive science. The new development form, the intelligent development direction is increasingly prominent, and it is expected to become a pioneering force in the new round of industrial transformation, leading to major changes in human production and lifestyle.

The International Federation of Robotics (IFR) predicts that the "robot revolution" will create a trillion-dollar market, which will drive the rapid development of key technologies and markets such as new material functional modules related to robotics, sensory acquisition and recognition, and intelligent control and navigation.

The report “The New Ecology of Robot 3.0 in the Artificial Intelligence Era” jointly published by International Data Corporation (IDC) and China’s Information and Communication Institute mentioned that iterative upgrades along with techniques such as perception, computation and control, image recognition, natural speech processing, and deep cognition The in-depth application of learning and other digital technologies in the field of robotics will have a profound impact on the robot industry and accelerate the development of intelligent intelligence in the robotics industry. Qu Daokui, founder and president of Xinsong Robot Automation Co., Ltd., said that the main technical components of industrial robots in the past were machinery, electronics, software and control; now robots have been fully integrated with big data, artificial intelligence, Internet of Things, and cloud computing. Together, a new ecosystem has emerged, which is also the biggest change in robotics. Only through this technological change and breakthrough, robots will have higher performance, function, intelligence and broad development space.

"Robots, in addition to its hardware, appearance and movement, are very important in the background of understanding, prediction, decision-making and front-end interaction capabilities." Liu Qingfeng, chairman of the board of Science and Technology Co., Ltd. said. AI technology can be seen as the core algorithm of the robot background. In industrial manufacturing, AI technology can promote cooperation between humans and robots, making machine collaboration more intelligent. Gong Ke, the president of the World Federation of Engineering Organizations and the president of China's new generation of artificial intelligence strategy research institute, said, "At present, artificial intelligence plays a very prominent role in the new round of technology and industrial revolution, artificial intelligence, big data. The combination of Internet of Things, the Internet, and cloud computing, and mutual empowerment, are pushing this era to form new productive forces and enter a new stage of development."

Experts pointed out that we will seize the window of intelligent social development in the next 10 years and accelerate shifts. In this round of profound adjustment of industrial structure, we will move to a new development platform, realize new driving development, and provide a great rejuvenation Chinese dream for the Chinese nation. Powerful.

Related reports

Evolution of the world's robots

The term robot appears not too long. In China, robots first appeared in the form of mechanical devices or automatic dolls. In the West, robots were first known as automata or self-controlled machines.

In the middle of the 20th century, the urgent need for mass production promoted the development of automation technology, which made CNC machine tools come into being. The in-depth development of key components such as control systems, servo systems and reducers for CNC machine tools has laid a solid foundation for robot development. At the same time, in order to cooperate with the atomic energy laboratory in the treatment of radioactive materials in the nuclear radiation environment, the remote robot and master-slave manipulator developed by the Argonne Institute of the American Atomic Energy Commission formed the first prototype of the robot.

In 1954, American George Wald made the world's first programmable robot. This type of robot can perform different tasks according to different procedures, with versatility and flexibility, and the second generation robots are on the stage. During this period, Wald and the American inventor Joseph Ingeberg, the father of industrial robots, teamed up to create the first industrial robot, Unimate, and established the world's first robot manufacturing plant. In 1962, the American AMF company produced the robot VERSTRAN. Like Unimate, it has become a truly commercial industrial robot, which has been exported to countries and set off a worldwide craze for robotics research.

In 1968, the Stanford Research Institute of the United States announced their successful development of the robot Shakey. Shakey has a certain amount of artificial intelligence, capable of autonomous perception, environmental modeling, behavior planning and execution tasks. It can be regarded as the world's first intelligent robot, which kicked off the third generation of robots.

In the 21st century, global robotics and industrial development have entered a new stage. Artificial intelligence, bionics, flexible materials and other technologies are widely used in various types of robots, and the third-generation robots, ie, intelligent robots, are ushered in a booming period. In 2000, the humanoid robot Asimo of Japan's Honda Technology Research Institute came out. In January 2001, the Swedish home appliance manufacturer Electrolux introduced the world's first sweeping robot "Trilobite" to the market. In 2005, Boston Dynamics, funded by the US Department of Defense's Advanced Research Projects Agency, developed a four-legged robot "big dog" that uses automated machinery to help the US military carry supplies under harsh conditions. In July 2013, Boston Dynamics announced its development of the 1.8-meter double-foot rescue robot "Atlas".

The rise of Chinese robots

China's related research on robots is nearly 30 years later than abroad. From the late 1970s to 1985, there were more than 200 large and small units in China that spontaneously carried out robot research and development. Although no robot products appeared, it laid the foundation for the development of robotics in China.

In 1986, the national “Seventh Five-Year” scientific and technological research project listed industrial robot technology as the 72nd research project, and began to organize research on basic theory of robots, key components and complete machine products, and allocated funds to establish the first robot research demonstration in Shenyang. center. The National 863 Program, which was implemented at the end of 1986, established an expert committee in the field of automation, under which two thematic groups CIMS and intelligent robots were established. The implementation of these two plans has enabled China's robot industry to enter a stage of organized and planned planning and development from a spontaneous, decentralized, low-level repeating state.