Robots are infiltrating our lives at a faster and faster speed - providing consulting and delivery services in hotels, delivering dishes in restaurants, handling goods in factory workshops, fine operation in operating rooms

 

Song Xiaogang, executive vice president of China Machinery Industry Federation and executive director of China robot industry alliance, said in an exclusive interview with the reporter of Economic Daily that China's robot industry has developed rapidly and has entered an important window period. During the "14th five year plan" period, the independent robot brand should seize this opportunity, make up the weak links in the industrial chain as soon as possible, solve the "neck" problem and realize high-quality development.

 

Application scenarios gradually mature

 

The research and development history of robots in China can be traced back to the 1970s, but the industrialization process began in 2010. Driven by industrialization, the whole industry began to enter the stage of rapid development.

 

At the opening ceremony of the 2021 world robot conference, Xin Guobin, Vice Minister of industry and information technology, said that China's robot industry exceeded 100 billion yuan for the first time in 2020, and China has become the backbone supporting the development of the world robot industry.

 

Xin Guobin introduced that China's industrial robot market has ranked first in the world for eight consecutive years, and the installed capacity accounted for 44% of the global total in 2020. At the same time, the development potential of service robots and special robots has also begun to be released. In 2020, the national service robot and special robot manufacturing enterprises above Designated Size achieved an operating revenue of 52.9 billion yuan, a year-on-year increase of 41%.

 

"At present, China's own brand robots have initially formed a complete industrial chain in R & D and design, key parts, integrated application of the whole machine, standard testing and certification, which can basically meet the basic needs of China's large industrial volume and wide range," said Song Xiaogang.

 

According to song Xiaogang's analysis, on the one hand, China's manufacturing industry has the largest scale in the world and the most complete industrial categories, and has the ability and foundation to develop towards high-quality manufacturing; On the other hand, with the decline of China's demographic dividend and the increase of labor cost, all walks of life are forced to transform to intelligence. In the process of high-quality development and transformation, China's manufacturing industry has a great market demand for the robot industry. In addition, the novel coronavirus pneumonia outbreak has led to a trend of unmanned and less humanized, which has increased the demand for robots in the market.

 

In the field of service robots, the two main directions of intelligent society and smart home also show a growth trend.

 

"China is a country with a large population, and the potential market for both social services and home services is obvious." Song Xiaogang predicted that as more and more service robots enter the family and undertake the tasks of cleaning, education and companionship, service robots will grow explosively soon.

 

Qu Daokui, President of Xinsong Robot Automation Co., Ltd., a leading enterprise in the robot industry, believes that robots have gradually developed and expanded in the fields of service, medical treatment, health, education and safety in recent years. In the future, the scale of these markets is likely to quickly exceed that of industrial robots.

 

Pricing and capacity challenges

 

With the vigorous development of the robot market and the continuous emergence of new outlets, the capital market heat of the robot track is unprecedented. According to the incomplete statistics of tianyancha data, from January to August this year, there were more than 60 financing events in China's robot industry, involving an amount of more than 12 billion yuan.

 

In the past two months, the robot market has been more lively, and several well-known enterprises have launched robot products across borders. On August 10, Xiaomi displayed the bionic robot cyberdog "iron egg"; On August 20, Tesla announced that it would launch a humanoid robot "Optimus"; On September 7, Xiaopeng automobile released the first robot horse "little white dragon".

 

However, the difficulties faced by robot enterprises can not be ignored. As song Xiaogang said, in terms of the three most important parts in the upstream of the robot industry - reducer, servo motor and controller, China's technical level in relevant fields is improving, which can basically meet the needs of independent brands in medium and low-end applications. However, to develop to the high-end, the key parts need to be further improved.

 

Core parts are highly dependent on imports, resulting in a large number of profits being eroded by overseas parts companies. More regrettably, independent brands not only do not have an advantage in cost, but also have lower prices than foreign brands, so the overall profitability is not high, which directly affects the R & D investment of enterprises.

 

"At present, some enterprises have begun to adopt domestic key parts." Song Xiaogang said that this is also a window period. It is very important to improve the key parts, reduce the cost of parts and ensure the product R & D and production cycle.

 

At the same time, he believes that there is also a gap between China and foreign countries in terms of capacity scale. More important than capacity is to ensure the reliability and consistency of batch products, which is a weakness to be solved by independent brands. However, the current development trend is very good. In the fields of welding robots, cooperative robots and small multi joint robots, the production capacity layout of some major enterprises is improving.

 

Qu Daokui believes that with the continuous expansion of China's robot market, the vigorous development of the capital market and the increasing maturity of application technology, China's robot industry should change from the past "strategic follow" to the future "strategic lead" and realize "parallel" or even "lead" in many product technologies.

 

Market segments have opportunities to surpass

 

On September 27, Haikang robot released the new generation of mobile robot (AMR) architecture platform "intelligent base".

 

Mobile robot is considered to be the biggest outlet of the robot industry in recent years. Wu Yonghai, vice president and general manager of AMR Business Department of Haikang robot company, introduced that at present, the AMR business of Haikang robot has served more than 1500 customers worldwide and delivered more than 30000 AMRS.

 

The advantages of independent brands' deep cultivation of subdivided tracks are becoming more and more prominent. As Ma Yeyun, vice president of Taihe capital, said, the real solid moat of the robot company comes from industry cognition, cost advantage and product matrix. The future head robot company should transform from "equipment supplier" to "solution and service provider".

 

Any segment is a huge market. Song Xiaogang said that this is another window period. At present, foreign brands mainly make general-purpose machines, but once the profitability of foreign brands decreases, they will make efforts in subdivided fields. The biggest advantage of independent brands is the local advantage, which is convenient to develop robot products and parts more needed in the market segment, form their own intellectual property rights, or catch up, run and even lead through innovation.

 

"In the robot industry, China can do better than foreign countries. The new round of product iteration has created this opportunity for us to surpass. In the future, leading enterprises should focus more on platform technology, invisible champions should segment the market, and core components should keep up with the global development trend to form a comprehensive support." Qu Daokui is full of confidence in the future of domestic robots.

 

The development of robot industry needs a perfect industrial chain and demand environment. Therefore, robot industrial park plays a more and more important role in the development of robots in China. According to incomplete statistics, the number of robot industrial parks in China will exceed 85 in 2020 after excluding the parks dominated by robot enterprises for their own use.

 

Song Xiaogang said that the development of the robot industry needs the joint efforts of the industry and local governments. If some regions with concentrated manufacturing industry can truly combine the needs of local transformation and upgrading to build a robot industry chain, it will help the development of robot enterprises. However, there is a phenomenon of blindly setting up robot industrial parks in some areas, which should be guided and standardized by relevant departments to avoid wasting a lot of land, funds and other resources. (Liu Jin)

 

Source: Economic Daily