The development of service robots is accelerating

Recently, iiMedia Consulting released the "Special Research Report on the Development of China's Robot Industry in 2022", which shows that the market size of China's robot industry is expected to reach 171.24 billion yuan in 2022, a year-on-year increase of 31.0%.

Among them, the market size of service robots is 74.24 billion yuan. The report predicts that with the continuous expansion of service robot application scenarios, its application and investment value will gradually become prominent. In 2023, the market size of China's service robots is expected to reach 95.92 billion yuan, which will surpass industrial robots by then The market size has become the largest application field of robots in China.

Since the outbreak of the epidemic, the demand for supplementing labor force and providing non-contact services has become stronger in various industries. The penetration rate of robots in different service application scenarios has continued to grow. The number of companies related to service robots in China has also increased significantly. In 2021, related companies have More than 100,000, China's population structure and social needs form a super-large-scale market advantage, which has a significant role in promoting the development of service robots.

Service robot application scenarios continue to expand

With the support of policies and the influence of social issues such as population aging and rising labor costs, the market demand for service robots to replace some manual and auxiliary work is becoming stronger and stronger. At the same time, with the development of science and technology, service robots are also constantly developing. Driven by various factors, the application value of service robots has gradually become prominent, and the application scenarios have been continuously expanded.

Service robots can be divided into household service robots and commercial service robots. At present, due to certain limitations in the scenarios of household robots, the development of the industry has shifted from scenario development to vertical function mining; commercial robots have a wide range of applications, and the needs of different fields are different, so they have greater potential to be tapped.

Among household service robots, cleaning robots are the most popular category, including sweeping robots, window cleaning robots, and air monitoring robots. In the future, cleaning robots with multifunctional combinations will become an important development direction in this field; educational robots are currently mainly used In the field of early education or special education, it helps infants and young children to learn in dialogue and somatosensory activities, and gradually expands to intellectual development, programming and other courses.

Among the commercial service robots, the logistics and warehousing industry and the hotel and tourism industry are currently the industries with the highest penetration rate of robots in the service industry, and the proportion of application among the interviewed enterprise users exceeds 60%. In the use of robots in major industries, the financial industry, medical industry, education industry, and catering industry are all vigorously preparing for the application of service robots. The proportion of robots used and planned to be used in the government service industry is relatively low, which is related to the complexity, high flexibility, and high confidentiality and security requirements of government-related work.

Driven by scenario-based demand, the service robot market continues to expand. According to data from iiMedia Consulting Report, the market size of China's service robots will reach 95.92 billion yuan in 2023, and the market share is expected to surpass that of industrial robots; the market size will reach 185.01 billion yuan in 2025. The development of China's service robot track is accelerating, and there is huge room for growth .

Service robots help reduce costs and increase efficiency

The main reason for the application of robots in various industries is to use robots to complete repetitive labor, reduce labor costs and improve work service efficiency, but different industries also have their own emphasis.

The report shows that the hotel tourism industry and the retail industry have the most obvious demands for reducing labor costs and improving efficiency; the logistics warehousing industry, government affairs industry and medical industry all have the greatest demand for improving efficiency and standardizing work processes; while the financial industry and catering fast-moving consumers If it is to reduce labor costs, the education industry is mainly to improve efficiency.

According to the analysis of survey data, service robots have significant effects in improving efficiency and reducing costs:

In terms of improving efficiency, most of the work efficiency of the service industry has improved after the application of robots, and 33.6% of them can increase the efficiency by more than half.

Among them, the medical industry and retail industry have greatly improved their efficiency, followed by the hotel industry and government affairs industry, while the efficiency of logistics, warehousing and financial industries has mostly improved by less than 50%. According to the report, service robots can meet the needs of most enterprises to improve work efficiency. In the future, we can pay more attention to the application efficiency of service robots in logistics, warehousing and financial industry scenarios.

In terms of cost reduction, after the application of robots in the service industry, the cost reduction rate is mostly within 50%, and a small number of enterprises can reduce the cost by 50%-75%. Among them, the cost reduction rate of the logistics warehousing industry and medical industry is larger .

According to the report, the current price of commercial service robots is still relatively high, and the cost rise is common in the short term. However, considering the proportion of robots used in various industries, the effect of reducing costs after long-term application is still relatively obvious.