The robot industry will usher in the China Era. What are the pros and cons?

With the acceleration of the "Made in China 2025" strategy, my country's robot industry market continues to expand. The number of robot-related companies has surged, and the market investment enthusiasm continues to rise.

After the Chinese government released the "Made in China (Made in China) 2025" plan, China's robot market has expanded significantly, and the growth trend is particularly evident in the field of industrial robots required by the manufacturing industry.

Some analysts believe that China's robot market will double in 2020, exceeding 66 trillion won in size. In addition, information technology (IT) consulting firm IDC predicts in its latest report that China will spend $59.4 billion on robotics in 2020. By 2020, the scale of China's robot industry will account for more than 30% of the global robot industry. From the perspective of the Asia-Pacific region (133 billion US dollars), China will occupy half of the scale of the robot industry.

In the past two years, thanks to the policy support and encouragement of the national and local governments and the double benefits of the market, the scale of the robot industry has grown rapidly. According to the data, there are more than 20 provinces focusing on the development of the robot industry in China, and more than 40 robot industrial parks. In the past two years, the number of robot companies has rapidly increased from less than 400 to more than 800, while there are more than 3,400 companies related to the industrial chain.

But behind the high enthusiasm for investment, the disadvantages of the robot industry have also been exposed. At present, most of the robot products on the market are low-end, and some of them either purchase foreign equipment for integration, or purchase foreign core components for assembly, and less than 1/3 of robot companies have intellectual property rights.

Taking service robots as an example, they are currently only in the stage of machine equipment, and they are still facing multiple technical challenges. On the one hand, what is the necessity for service robots to enter the home? What problems can they solve? Internet of Things environment, and the Internet of Things itself is now facing great challenges.

Not only that, but my country's robot industry is also facing a talent problem. At present, talents engaged in robot-related research are emerging in a steady stream, but it is puzzling that many robot-related companies are still in a serious "shortage of people", especially the lack of high-end talents.

It is understood that the current top-level experts engaged in teaching and research in the field of robotics in colleges and universities are about 45 to 55 years old, and many of them come from the mechanical discipline. When they were in college, "the mechanical discipline and the mechanical industry were relatively depressed. The knowledge structure of the entire mechanical discipline is relatively outdated.”

In contrast, although young scholars have a lot of new knowledge and new ideas, they are still in the "climbing" stage. "I also counted the Chinese experts who published at IROS (the top international robotics conference, the world's top robotics conference) The number of papers was only 16 in 2014, 42 in 2015, and 46 in 2016, and the ratio is still very low." Professor Zhu Shiqiang said.

In addition, the curriculum setting of training institutions such as colleges and vocational schools is still lagging behind. Although some robot manufacturers provide relevant training, there are shortcomings such as over-targeted branding, insufficient promotion, insufficient supporting facilities, and limited training outlets. It is difficult to achieve a systematic The teaching process of the school still cannot fit well with the needs of scholars all over the country, resulting in many people who are interested in joining the robot industry have nowhere to go to school.