Is the "Robot Age" Coming?

China has become the world's largest purchaser of industrial robots—according to the statistics of the World Federation of Robotics (IFR), China purchased 36,560 industrial robots in 2013, surpassing Japan and the United States, and the demand ranks No. 1 in the world One, and the average annual growth rate is more than 40%. Analysts lamented, "Never has a country had such a huge demand for industrial robots in such a short period of time."

Questionnaire for managers: Is the era of "robot generation" coming?

The demand blowout under the pressure of transformation

Behind the demand blowout, there is an urgent situation for Chinese enterprises to accelerate the pace of transformation and upgrading under the heavy pressure of rising labor costs. In recent years, China's population structure has undergone significant changes. The growth rate of the working-age population aged 15 to 59 has slowed down year by year, reaching a peak in 2010, and has since declined absolutely. The decline of the demographic dividend is most directly manifested in the shortage of ordinary workers and the continuous rise in wages, the production cost of the manufacturing industry has greatly increased, and the traditional comparative advantage tends to be lost.

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 against the weakening of the demographic dividend. We have also seen that in recent years, from decision-making departments to major robot manufacturers, they are all rushing to this strategic highland. The Ministry of Industry and Information Technology issued the "Guiding Opinions on Promoting the Development of the Industrial Robot Industry" at the beginning of the year, pointing out that industrial robots represent the future development direction of intelligent equipment and are of great significance to industrial transformation and upgrading, and relevant industries should be vigorously developed; according to the statistics of the consulting agency IHS , the top international robot body manufacturers have all opened branches in China, and most of them already have factories or plan to open factories in China, while the industry giant ABB simply put the global robot business headquarters and one of the two major production bases. All in Shanghai.

On the other hand, although China's demand for robots has reached the world's first, the density of robot usage is still very low. In the manufacturing industry, there are only 23 robots per 10,000 workers in China, less than one-tenth of Japan's 332 robots, and a large gap compared with the world average of 55 robots. Not only that, 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. In many industries that use a lot of labor, such as electronics manufacturing, robot manufacturers are lacking in pertinence. The product.

Innovative applications in a wider field

As a result, we are seeing more and more local companies actively filling these gaps. At the end of 2013, Advantech, famous for its industrial computer, acquired Baoyuan CNC, a professional controller manufacturer, and entered the robotics industry. According to Luo Huancheng, general manager of its China region, Advantech will cooperate with upstream and downstream robot companies to develop robot solutions suitable for a wide range of fields such as electronic assembly, semiconductor, 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 self-developed industrial robots. Its president, Li Xiaotao, said that the company's entry into the field of robots is "natural and at the right time."

Although more and more local manufacturers are entering the robot market, except for a few mature industries of automotive lighting, there are a large number of industries that have the potential to introduce robots. Because there is no ready-made and reasonable robot application solution, companies often have no way to To start, I don't know how to carry out the "robotization" transformation. Therefore, in the current Chinese robot market, there are many system integrators serving the successful application of robots by enterprises. According to the needs of the actual application of the enterprise, they make peripheral equipment around the robot, and even optimize the design of the entire assembly line to realize automation.

Compared with the R&D and manufacturing of robot bodies, system integrators have lower barriers to entry, and their main competitiveness lies in a thorough understanding of the industries they serve. Therefore, we will see some companies that have successfully introduced robots to automate the transformation of their assembly lines and become system integrators themselves, serving 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 robots in 2009, and gradually assembles various products such as mouse receivers, mouse back covers and key board assemblies. The robot operation is realized in the link, so that the robot runs through the whole production system and realizes the automatic transformation of the production line. This successful case can be described as a precedent in the field of electronic manufacturing.

In Rapoo's industrial park in Pingshan, Shenzhen, in the clean production workshop, orange robots are distributed in every corner of the production line, cooperating with workers to produce. In a labeling process, the two robots quickly grab, turn, and fit together, dividing labor and cooperating 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 day and night to achieve the efficiency of the robot. Now, after the transformation, no manual participation is required.

"We will formulate a timetable for the automation of the entire production line with robots based on the difficulty and input-output ratio of introducing robots for automated transformation in each production link, and implement it step by step." Rapoo Deng Qiuwei, deputy general manager of production management and general manager of the Robotics Division, said.

According to his introduction, at present, Rapoo not only continuously transforms the production line with robot automation, but also carries out "technical output" to help other enterprises that intend to introduce robots to upgrade and transform. "The development trend of this business is very good. But it is a tiring job, which not only requires several months or even longer to research and make plans. In the implementation stage, it also requires the patience and persistence of the business owner, because the robot has just been introduced. , there will definitely be many problems, if there is a lack of such persistence, the project will easily fail."

The era of robots

The advantage of "robots replacing humans" on the production line has become more and more It is becoming more and more obvious, but facing the future, the concept of "robot" is far from being as simple as a manipulator on the production line, and there are still many possibilities for the development of robots. "The robot contains at least two meanings, one is the intelligence of the manufacturing process, and the other is the intelligence of the product." Professor Bi Yalei, assistant to the dean of the Shenzhen Institute of Advanced Technology, Chinese Academy of Sciences, pointed out. "The intelligence of the manufacturing process refers to the manipulator of the production line, etc. Of course, even the manipulator can still use new technologies such as machine vision to make it more 'intelligent'. And the intelligence of products is more extensive. , judgment, and mobility devices are the prototype of robots.”

This broader definition makes us look forward to the future of the robot era. From increasingly smart mobile phones, wristbands, smart cars, to service robots, entertainment robots, etc., all of them are showing us that the future of "robots" will not be limited to industrial production. For example, an entertainment robot called Alpha Robot can dance, sing, and even play football freely, becoming the first commercialized entertainment robot in China.

It seems that the trend of robots blooming in industrial applications, service applications and other fields is coming. It is conceivable that the future production mode and life style will be profoundly changed by robots.