Deep Integration With More Industries The Robot Industry Ushered in A New Round Of Growth

Since the beginning of this year, as epidemic prevention and control has entered a new stage, China's economy has picked up momentum. Relevant data show that in January, the manufacturing industry's production and demand sentiment picked up significantly, the service sector recovered rapidly, and the non-manufacturing sector bottomed out and rebounded. Market players gained more confidence in the development of the economy, and the strong driving force of economic growth was quickly released. This edition from the beginning of the launch of a series of reports, focusing on the industry enterprises to create a new situation in 2023, to promote the realization of quality and effective improvement and quantity of reasonable growth, take a good quality of the road to development of a new journey.

From a 550W quantum computer named Mosses to a four-legged bionic robotic dog named Benben, the recent hit movie The Wandering Earth 2 showcases a wide variety of robots. In fact, many robots in the movie are not special effects or customized, but have been used in manufacturing, trade logistics, medical health, business community services and other fields.

Recently, 17 departments including the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology issued the Implementation Plan for the Application of "Robot +", which is to press the "acceleration button" for the development of China's robot industry, and promote the faster entry of robots into thousands of households and into thousands of industries.

Deep integration with more industries

The year 2022 has just seen an explosion of new technologies and products in the field of robotics. With the release of Xiaomi's full-size humanoid robot "CyberOne" and Tesla's humanoid robot "Optimus", humanoid robots are emerging as a new player in the industry.

"The AI and humanoid robotics industries don't have a corner to overtake." Zhou Jian, founder, chairman and CEO of Shenzhen Youbeisheng Technology Co., LTD., told reporters that in order to achieve high-quality development of hard technology industry, only by down-to-earth research and development and persistent investment can we win the battle of key core technologies. Over the past 10 years, Youbixuan Technology has formed more than 1,500 technical patents and made major breakthroughs in artificial intelligence algorithm and humanoid robot ontology technology. Walker, a large humanoid robot independently developed by the company, has gone through many iterations and achieved controllable cost and stable mass production and delivery. It has served for 6 months in the China Pavilion of Dubai World Expo, providing reception and tour services for more than 1,000 times, which is also the first large-scale humanoid service robot to be truly commercialized.

"It's pretty certain that the future of humanoid robots is in China." Zhou Jian analysis, China is one of the few countries in the world has produced humanoid robot products, in the humanoid robot market has occupied the first mover advantage. At the same time, our country also has the largest scale, most complete categories and the most complete supporting industrial chain system in the world. This advantage not only can no country replace, but also will become increasingly perfect with the replacement of industry. China is also one of the biggest potential markets for humanoid robots. The new generation of Chinese young people continue to benefit from technological innovation and are more willing to accept and embrace cutting-edge technologies, which will virtually reduce the commercialization resistance of humanoid robots, accelerate iterative optimization, and create a strong top edge.

At present, a new round of scientific and technological revolution and industrial transformation is accelerating. Artificial intelligence, 5G, new energy and new materials are deeply integrated with robot technology, and the robot industry is ushering in a window period of upgrading and leapfrog development.

Wei Yuhuai, executive president of Zhongcheng Think Tank, said intelligent manufacturing, represented by robots, will be the only way for high-quality development of domestic manufacturing as the population declines, aging accelerates and the cost of various factors keeps rising. Looking forward to 2023, with the introduction of the Plan as an opportunity, the robot industry will deeply integrate with more industries. Under the background of the recovery of consumption and investment, the domestic robot industry as a whole will usher in a new round of high-speed growth. Among them, domestic industrial robots will gradually form an independent and controllable whole industrial chain foundation, and the industry will enter a stable growth period. Service robots have room for rapid growth due to more market segments.

Difficulties and pain points need to be overcome

Multiple factors boost the rapid development of Chinese robot industry. The China Robot Industry Development Report released at the 2022 World Robot Conference estimates that China's robot market will reach 17.4 billion U.S. dollars in 2022, with an average annual growth rate of 22% from 2017 to 2022. In 2022, the industrial robot market is expected to reach $8.7 billion, the service robot market is expected to reach $6.5 billion, and the special robot market is expected to reach $2.2 billion.

"The robot market in China is expected to exceed $25 billion by 2024, with an average annual growth rate of 21 percent from 2022 to 2024." Wei Yuhuai said.

At present, Chinese robot enterprises constantly improve their core competitiveness through independent innovation and implementation of the whole industrial chain distribution strategy. In the field of industrial robots, a group of robot leaders represented by Huichuan Technology, Shenyang Siasun, Anhui Evert, Harbin Boshi, Guangzhou CNC, Nanjing Estun, etc., are catching up. Service robots have developed relatively mature in the fields of home use, education and entertainment, medical rehabilitation, public service, emergency rescue, extreme operation and so on. Many local advantageous enterprises have emerged, such as Cobos, Youbi, Kangliyoulan, Future Partner, Narnbo, iFlytek, DJI Innovation, Kewei Intelligence and so on.

"China's robot industry has advantages in terms of industrial chain scale, application ecology, cost and scenario, and has established a relatively complete industrial chain of industrial robots, but there are still problems such as insufficient technology accumulation, weak industrial base and lack of high-end supply." Wei Yuhuai introduced that the current in the motor, reducer and other key technical fields, domestic manufacturers have achieved technological breakthroughs, but there is still a big gap compared with the top manufacturers; In terms of control system, China has achieved a breakthrough from scratch. However, due to the deficiency of underlying software architecture and core control algorithm, there is an obvious gap between domestic controller and international mainstream products in terms of stability, response speed and usability. Robot sensing systems, especially high-end supplies, are still highly dependent on imports.

"For robot companies, the country has a very broad market prospect, but the problem of market demand is still very prominent." Song Xiaogang, secretary general of China Machinery Industry Federation and executive chairman of China Robot Industry Alliance, told reporters that at present, Chinese robots are difficult to meet the needs of some enterprises for product stability, reliability and applicability, which leads to in the domestic market, especially in the middle and high-end market, compared to foreign brands, the market share of independent brands is still low. There is the problem of asymmetric supply and demand information.

"The foreign robot industry is more mature than us in solving some application problems, which have been iterated over many years in actual use. At the present stage, we have some reserves in basic theory and basic technology. In order to better seize market opportunities and meet market demands, we should let the product enter the application innovation stage, accelerate product and technology iteration through application, and find out the difficult points of R&D innovation in this process. Only by addressing these difficulties and blocking points can we truly solve practical problems." Song Xiaogang said.

Policy traction supply and demand power

According to Wei Yuhuai, at present, the application field of industrial robots has been expanded from automobile, electronics, metal products, rubber and plastic and other key industries, gradually to textile, logistics, pharmaceutical, semiconductor, food, raw materials and other industries, but the automobile industry is still the largest application market of industrial robots. In terms of service robot, the demand of national defense and family field detonates the service robot market. In particular, cleaning robot and medical robot have become the fields with the best development prospects and the fastest growth rate in the domestic service robot industry.

According to the plan, by 2025, the density of robots in manufacturing will be doubled compared with that in 2020, the depth and breadth of application of service robots and special robots will be significantly increased, and the ability of robots to promote high-quality economic and social development will be significantly enhanced.

Song Xiaogang said that "Robot Plus" application action will implement one of the five main tasks put forward in the "14th Five-Year Plan" robot industry development Plan - to expand the depth and breadth of application. The introduction of the plan will lay a solid foundation for the realization of the development goals set out in the plan: "By 2025, the annual revenue growth of the robot industry will exceed 20% and the density of robots in the manufacturing industry will double."

"The Plan hopes to make joint efforts from both the supply side and the demand side to promote the application of 'robot plus' at a high level." Song Xiaogang said that in the future, with the acceleration of the integration of government and industry resources, the ways of supply and demand docking will be more and more diverse, such as targeted industrial docking of segmented industries, the construction of "robot +" application experience and test and verification center, and the supply and demand docking activities of resource sharing, information exchange and complementary advantages. Select a group of benchmarking enterprises and typical scenarios with outstanding application results and strong influence in mature application fields, accelerate the depth and breadth of application, and promote the realization of high-quality innovation on the supply side.

"The breadth and depth of robotics will accelerate." Wei Yuhuai believes that China's robot industry will enter the fast lane and fully drive the prosperity of industrial robot, service robot, special robot and even humanoid robot industry chain.