Español
Português
Việt Nam
日本語
русский 
عربي 
Deutsch
한국어
Türkçe
Français
Italiano
According to the data of the seventh national census, the average annual population growth rate of our country has been at a historically low level for a long time in the past 30 years, and the performance has been more obvious in the past ten years. Industries that originally enjoyed demographic dividends with a high birth rate, such as 3C electronics, logistics, and automobile manufacturing, are already facing the problem of "not recruiting jobs" brought about by the chronically low birth rate.
Synchronized with the sluggish birth rate is the rapid growth of the mobile robot market. According to statistics from the China Mobile Robot Industry Alliance, in 2020, my country's mobile robot sales will reach 41,000 units, with a market size of 7.68 billion yuan, a year-on-year increase of 24.4%. From a micro-level of a single company, the latest financial report of autonomous mobile robot MiR (Mobile Industrial Robots, hereinafter referred to as MiR) shows that its third-quarter revenue was 13 million U.S. dollars, and its global sales performance increased by 40% year-on-year. In the previous financial report for the first quarter of 2021, MiR's growth rate reached 55%.
Nowadays in the manufacturing industry, the main purpose of mobile robots in actual production is handling. According to the form of operation, they can be divided into sorting mobile robots, forklift mobile robots, cargo transfer mobile robots, traction mobile robots, latent mobile robots, etc. , Mainly used in the automotive industry, 3C electronics, chip manufacturing, logistics packaging and other industries.
There are also two very obvious trends within mobile robots. One is the replacement of AGV (Automated Guided Vehicle) by AMR (Autonomous Mobile Robot). AMR can better solve tasks in scenes with many external interferences and non-fixed lines. The other is circulated in the industry. "2021 is the first year of composite robots."
More economical AGV and smarter AMR
Direct comparison of AGV (Automated Guided Vehicle) and AMR (Autonomous Mobile Robot) technologies. AGVs are less intelligent and are transported on fixed lines in accordance with existing instructions. Unlike AMR, which can flexibly avoid obstacles and plan routes independently when encountering obstacles on the line, AGVs will stop and wait for the obstacles to be removed. Crowded production lines and narrow channels will encounter various problems.
At the same time, AMR breaks through the AGV's dependence on external infrastructure such as magnetic strips, guide rails, and QR codes. In factories with high requirements for the operating environment, magnetic strips, guide rails, and QR codes may all cause interference.
The unit price of AMR is much higher than that of AGV. The current situation is that the global sales of AMR and AGV are not much different, but there is a big difference in sales. According to data from Interact Analysis, AGV sales in 2020 will be 1.268.4 billion U.S. dollars, accounting for 53.8%, and AMR sales will be 1.0903 billion U.S. dollars, accounting for 46.2%. However, AMR has grown rapidly in the past two years, with its market share increasing from 29.9% in 2018 to 46.2% in 2020.
So how does the Chinese AMR market perform? According to the China Mobile Robot Industry Alliance, 41,000 new industrial application mobile robots (AGV/AMR) will be added to the Chinese market in 2020, an increase of 25.7% over 2019, and market sales will be 7.68 billion yuan, a year-on-year increase of 24.4%. Among them, in 2020, the domestic market AMR shipments will be about 2,800 units, an increase of 86% year-on-year, and the market size will be about 560 million yuan.
Interact Analysis predicts that the AMR market has continued to maintain double-digit growth in the past five years, and it is estimated that by 2022, the global mobile robot demand for AMR, revenue and sales are expected to exceed AGV.
"2021 is the first year of composite robots"
In 2021, composite robots will begin to land in the semiconductor, electric power, big data centers, metal processing and other industries. From this, industry insiders have circulated that 2021 is the "first year of composite robot application."
The composite robot combines the functions of a mobile robot and an industrial robot, as if it possesses human legs (AGV), hands (manipulator arms), eyes (3D vision), and brain (AI). In the industrial field, robotic arms mainly replace human arms for picking and placing items, while autonomous mobile robots replace the walking function of human legs and feet. The superposition of the two can greatly extend the functions and available scenes of the robot.
That is, to a certain extent, the compound robot can integrate multiple actions to complete the workload of one or even several adult men in the factory, and improve the automation level of the factory.