Some people say that now in China is a very unique opportunity in the field of technological development of the robot, if so, must first understand the current state of development of industrial robots in China. As we all know, China is the world’s leading low-cost manufacturer. Of course, recent trends have shown that China also has more and more figures in the field of advanced manufacturing.
About two years ago, the total sales of industrial robots in the world was about 168,000 units, while in China in the same year, the sales of robots were about 38,000 units, accounting for 20% of the world, and it is still growing at a rate of 30% per year. From 2005 to 2014, the change in the number of robot suppliers can be seen. By 2011, you will observe that the number of Chinese suppliers has suddenly increased significantly. If you go to Shanghai at that time, you will see a very Many robot companies. If this trend continues, within two years, there will be more industrial robots in China’s production equipment than in Europe, the United States, Japan, and South Korea. This is reality and is happening. What is driving this change?
On the one hand, a lot of investment. The government and private funds have invested heavily in the field of industrial robots. China currently has more than 400 robot companies, and 1/3 of robot sales this year are done by domestic companies; Guangdong Province announced that it will invest RMB 943 billion in robot replacement in 2015-2018; Shenzhen DJI Innovation Technology Co., Ltd. ( DJI-Innovations) is a Shenzhen-based drone manufacturing company, which was valued at US $ 10 billion by Forbes this year, indicating that the robot company has grown to a certain scale; Shenyang Xinsong Robot is currently the leader of industrial robots in China They have invested a lot of research and development and achieved great success. Although they are relatively small compared with the international leading robot manufacturers, their investment and development speed are very fast. This shows that China is growing into a “robot country”, which is a success.
On the other hand, market demand. South Korea currently has the highest proportion of robots in use in the world, with an average of 396 robots out of 10,000 workers, and 23 in China. It is expected to grow to 200 in the next few years, which contains huge demand space. Some analysts believe that based on the experience of Japan and South Korea, when the per capita GDP of a country reaches about 6,000 US dollars, the application of robots will grow rapidly, and China has reached this critical point.
China’s demand for robots is more diverse than other countries. China’s diverse industries and diverse cultures make China have the most types of industries in the world, and some are unique to China. China ’s rich food processing industry is an example. At present, the traditional food processing industry is relatively primitive, and a large number of robotic technologies need to be introduced to improve product quality.
The third aspect is technological progress. The development of robots has gone through several stages, such as simple mechanical robots, complex mechanical robots, and intelligent robots. Each stage is the result of a certain degree of technology accumulation. The rapid progress of sensor technology and computer technology is the foundation of the current development of intelligent robots, making many real-time calculations and complex motion planning and calculations impossible in the past, which are inseparable from the development of technology.
Despite the trend, robots have great potential in China, but they also face many challenges: the price needs to be reduced, and the prices of robots are too expensive. In the past few years, the price of robots has been reduced from $ 50,000 to $ 25,000, but This price is still too high. China needs cheaper robots. For example, $ 5,000 is obviously a more realistic number. The same thing happened in Taiwan, China. Delta Electronics is working on producing robots for $ 10,000 each, which is driven by market demand. The demand for low-cost robots comes from many practical reasons:
1. Depends on robot input-output ratio. In general, the labor cost in China is relatively low. If robots are used instead of labor, the cost-effectiveness ratio of robots and labor needs to be considered. If the price of robots is too high, companies are more willing to use manual labor, and vice versa. In China, this trend will continue for a long time.
2. The number of robots determines the price. Because the research and development of robots requires a large initial investment, if the number does not reach a certain scale, its cost cannot be reduced very low. Once the sales of robots in China are large enough, low-cost robots of $ 5,000 will become possible. At present, such robots have not been produced in Europe and the United States. The advent of the $ 5,000 robot will become a truly disruptive phenomenon, and it will trigger many changes in the computer science community. This is what I really want to say. This kind of robot will stimulate many applications, such as advanced manufacturing, agriculture, elderly care, disaster response, and so on. This low-cost robot will profoundly affect many fields, of course, while creating markets, it will also destroy some markets.
Intelligence needs to be improved, let’s take a look at another story. Everyone knows Foxconn CEO Guo Taiming. He predicted in 2011 that they would install 1 million robots by 2014, but actually only 10,000 robots work on the production line. This is because they found that people work more efficiently on the production line than robots. The main reason is that many production lines are not fully standardized, especially in China, where the scope of production of commodities is particularly wide, resulting in a large number of enterprise production are non-standardized It is difficult to replace manual labor on non-standard production lines with standardized robots. Computer technology needs to follow up. The early robots completed simple mechanical operations, and today’s robots require more intelligence to deal with a large number of non-standardized actions and behaviors. In addition, as the division of labor in production links becomes more and more detailed, a large number of processes need to cooperate with each other. All these robot application problems need to be solved at a higher level. The core problem is that the computer science community needs to develop more control software, not just simple machine hardware.
For the computing field, robot technology is a new type of computer that integrates traditional computer technology and execution mechanisms. Due to the particularity of its application, this new type of computer has some new features. It is necessary to further develop computing technology to meet new needs;
1. Cheap sensors: Robots need various types of sensors to obtain guidance on further behavior. For example, visual sensors are used to see objects, including shapes and positions, and infrared sensors are used to obtain physical properties of objects. However, if various existing sensors have to meet the requirements of high precision, the cost is generally very high. Therefore, the development of low-cost sensors that can simultaneously meet the high-precision requirements of robots is an important issue in the future.
2. Real-time algorithm: Since the robot is to perform real-time operation on the production line, the core algorithm of all the underlying software that guides the operation must meet the time requirements of various actions, which poses a huge challenge to various real-time algorithms. A very typical example is the advanced printing online inspection robot, which must detect whether the print quality of the printed matter is qualified in real time, including whether the color is biased or missing, whether the pattern is wrong or misplaced, etc. Because the width and speed of modern large-scale printing machines are very amazing, only one or two manufacturers in the world can provide the most high-end intelligent printing inspection equipment.
3. Automatic repair software: Once the robot is applied to the production line, the biggest worry is the failure. When a large number of intelligent robots work simultaneously, the entire production line is a huge intelligent system. Failure at any one of the positions in the middle may cause the production line to stagnate or even cause serious production accidents. Therefore, the reliability of robots, especially the reliability of cluster robots, has become a key issue for future research. Automatic repair software, especially software that can be automatically upgraded according to constant changes in the production line, may be one of the feasible solutions. In addition, it is also a very important factor that does not affect production safety and efficiency during automatic repair or automatic upgrade. Therefore, automatic repair software is also a new issue for traditional software technology.
4. Flexible and configurable robot development platform: At present, robots are basically products that are specially developed for a certain type of common needs. Processes such as software development and post-testing. However, this seemingly standard process has relatively high costs, and it also creates repeated demands for relevant high-end talents. A large number of robot companies may be engaged in similar research and development. Therefore, a development platform that flexibly combines robot hardware, software, and application environments is an important requirement in the future. These platforms can be used by all personalized robot development companies. A similar example can refer to the programmable logic controller (PLC) already in use in the field of industrial control. It integrates computer technology and control technology to form a modular universal platform, which plays a role in the popularization and application of control technology Important role.
In short, China is in an important position in the international manufacturing industry, manufacturing technology is facing upgrade, and economic development is facing transformation. The increase in labor costs has made robot technology an important development opportunity in China, but the demand for robots in turn has put forward higher requirements for computer-related scientific research.
