The hottest robot era is coming

Is the "robot era" coming

China has become the largest purchaser of industrial robots in the world after scraping off the film materials to be tested. According to the statistics of the World Federation of Robotics (IFR), China purchased 36560 industrial robots in 2013, surpassing Japan and the United States. The demand ranks first in the world, and the average annual growth rate is more than 40%. Analysts lament that no country has ever had such a huge demand for industrial robots in such a short time

demand blowout under the pressure of transformation

behind the demand blowout is the urgent situation for Chinese enterprises to accelerate the pace of transformation and upgrading under the heavy pressure of the continuous rise in human costs

in recent years, China's population structure has changed significantly. The growth rate of the working age population aged 15-59 has slowed down year by year, reaching a peak in 2010, and then began to decrease absolutely. The decline of the demographic dividend is most directly reflected in the shortage of ordinary workers and the continuous rise in wages, the substantial increase in manufacturing production costs, and the loss of traditional comparative advantage

the most significant advantage of industrial robots lies in the effective replacement of simple and repetitive human labor processes. Therefore, the use of industrial robots has become an effective way to hedge the weakening of demographic dividends. We also see that in recent years, from the decision-making departments to the major robot manufacturers, all are scrambling for this strategic highland. At the beginning of the year, the Ministry of industry and information technology issued the guiding opinions on promoting the development of industrial robot industry, pointing out that industrial robots represent the development direction of intelligent equipment in the future and are of great significance to industrial transformation and upgrading. The lithium mine 3341 resource in daze Muzu region has 519500 tons to develop related industries; According to the statistics of IHS, the top international robot ontology manufacturers have set up branches in China, and most of them have owned factories or plan to open factories in China, while abb, the industry giant, simply put the global robot business headquarters and one of the two production bases in Shanghai

on the other hand, although the demand for robots in China has reached the first in the world, the use density of robots is still very low. In the manufacturing industry, there are only 23 robots per 10000 workers in China, less than one tenth of Japan's 332, and there is also a large gap compared with the world average of 55. Moreover, the industries that use robots are also relatively narrow. The product applications of international giants are mainly concentrated in a few industries such as automobiles and machinery, while in many industries that use a lot of labor, such as electronic manufacturing, robot manufacturers lack targeted products

innovative applications in a wider field

therefore, we see that more and more local enterprises are actively filling these gaps. Advantech, which is famous for industrial computers, acquired Baoyuan CNC, a professional controller manufacturer, at the end of 2013 to enter the robot industry. According to Luo Huancheng, its general manager in China, next, Advantech will cooperate with upstream and downstream robot enterprises to focus on the research and development of robot solutions suitable for a wide range of fields such as electronic assembly, semiconductors, food and beverage, pharmaceutical and metal processing. Huazhong CNC, which already has core technologies in the core fields of industrial robots such as control systems, servo drives and motors, has launched its own industrial robots. Its president Li Xiaotao said that it is logical and at the right time for the company to enter the robot field

although more and more local manufacturers have entered the robot market, except for a few mature industries of automotive lamps, there are a large number of industries with potential to introduce robots. Because there is no ready-made and reasonable robot application scheme, enterprises often have no way to start and do not know how to carry out the transformation of roboticization. Therefore, in the current Chinese robot market, many system integrators have emerged to serve the successful application of robots by enterprises. According to the actual needs of enterprises for intensive energy conversion, they support peripheral equipment around robots, and even optimize the design of the whole assembly line to realize automation

compared with the R & D and manufacturing of robot ontology, the entry threshold of system integrators is low, and their main competitiveness lies in a thorough understanding of the industry they serve. Therefore, we will see that some enterprises that have successfully introduced robots for assembly line automation transformation have become system integrators and serve other customers in the industry

for example, Shenzhen rapoo technology, which is a leader in the field of wireless peripheral products, introduced ABB's lightweight robot in 2009, and gradually realized robot operation in various production and assembly links such as mouse receiver, mouse back cover and key board assembly, so that the robot can run through the whole production system and realize the automatic transformation of the production line. This successful case is a pioneer in the field of electronic manufacturing

in Leibo's Industrial Park in Pingshan, Shenzhen, in the tidy production workshop, orange robots are distributed in every corner of the production line to cooperate with workers in production. In a labeling process, the two robots quickly grasp, turn, fit, divide work and cooperate, with high efficiency. According to the staff, in the past, this process required more than a dozen people to sit around the table and repeat the same action all day long in order to achieve the efficiency of the robot. Now after transformation, no human participation is required

according to the difficulty and input-output ratio of introducing robots into each production link, we will formulate a schedule for the automation transformation of the whole production line with robots, and realize it step by step. Said Deng Qiuwei, deputy general manager of rapoo in charge of production management and general manager of robot business department

according to his introduction, at present, rapoo not only continuously transforms the robot automation of the production line, but also exports technology to help other enterprises that intend to introduce robots to upgrade and transform. The development trend of this business is very good. But this is a tiring process, which requires not only several months or even longer of research and planning. In the implementation stage, the patience and persistence of the enterprise boss are also required, because there will be many problems when robots are just introduced. Without this persistence, the project is not allowed to violently impact the inclined block on the swing arm, which is easy to fail

robot era

the advantage of replacing people with machines on the production line has become more and more obvious, but facing the future, the concept of robots is far from as simple as the manipulator on the production line, and there are still many possibilities for the development of robots. Robots have at least two meanings, one is the intellectualization of manufacturing process, the other is the intellectualization of products. Professor bialei, assistant dean of Shenzhen Institute of advanced technology, Chinese Academy of Sciences, pointed out. The intellectualization of manufacturing process refers to the manipulator of the production line. Of course, even the manipulator can be made more intelligent through new technologies such as machine vision. The intellectualization of products is more extensive. Any device with the ability of perception, judgment and action has the prototype of robot

this broader definition makes us look forward to the future of the robot era. From more and more intelligent, bracelets, intelligent cars, to service robots, entertainment robots, etc., are all telling us that the future of robots will not be limited to industrial production. For example, an entertainment robot named alpha robot, which can dance, sing and even play football freely, has become the first commercialized entertainment robot in China

it seems that robots will bloom in industrial applications, service applications and other fields. It is conceivable that the future production mode and lifestyle will be profoundly changed by robots