The intelligent robot industry has huge demand potential
The era of intelligent robots is coming
The development of a new generation of information technology has laid a solid foundation for the development of intelligent robots, and the global robot industry is entering a new era of intelligence. At present, the practical breakthrough of artificial intelligence technology represented by image recognition, speech recognition, natural language understanding, etc., has led to a significant improvement in the perception, interaction, and decision-making capabilities of robots. Today’s face recognition accuracy rate has reached 99.55%, exceeding 97.35% of the human eye recognition rate, and the voice input recognition success rate has reached more than 97%. The robot already has the technical conditions of “seeing and understanding”. With the gradual application of deep learning and unsupervised learning, robots have a more critical "thinking" ability, and robots have truly entered a new era of intelligence.
Driven by market demand, the application scope of intelligent robots is continuously expanding to emerging fields. The application of intelligent technology is driving the significant improvement of the functions and performance of robot products, driving the application of intelligent robot products in more emerging fields. On the one hand, a new generation of industrial robots represented by human-machine collaborative robots are safer and more flexible. They are not only widely used in the traditional automotive and metal processing industries, but also drive a new wave of applications in the 3C electronics industry. On the other hand, intelligent services and special robots for home furnishing, education, medical and other fields are constantly enriched. Compared with previous products, the user experience has been greatly improved. Therefore, they have also begun to enter the daily life of the general public and have been more widely used. application.
The upsurge of intelligent robot applications also drives the continuous rapid growth of the industry scale
According to the statistics of the "Production and Sales Demand Forecast and Transformation and Upgrading Analysis Report of China's Industrial Robot Industry" released by the Foresight Industry Research Institute, the global industrial robot market size in 2017 was about 14 billion U.S. dollars, and the global industrial robot supply is expected to exceed 52 in 2020. Ten thousand sets. The market potential of intelligent robots in non-industrial fields is also constantly being released. It is estimated that the market size of the three major fields of business, home furnishing and military will reach 17 billion US dollars, 9 billion US dollars and 16.5 billion US dollars in 2025. It is especially worth noting that the focus of the global smart robot market is shifting from Europe and the United States to the Asia-Pacific region. It is expected that the Asia-Pacific region will replace Europe as the world's largest market in 2020, and its share will increase from 19% in 2015 to 57%.
International competition will become more intense
The United States, Europe, Japan and other developed countries and regions have introduced smart robot-related strategic plans, with the core goal of improving the international competitiveness of the industry, and the layout in advance from the level of technology research and development and industrial development. Among them, the United States attempts to use the "Robot Roadmap" to establish advantages in next-generation robotics technology and applications. The European Union launched the "SPARC Plan" to ensure the strategic leadership of European robots in the world. Japan pointed out in the "New Robotics Strategy" , To become the world's number one country in which robots are used, and my country also released the "Robot Industry Development Plan" in 2016, in an effort to enhance the international competitiveness of its own brands. It is foreseeable that the international competition around intelligent robots will become more intense in the future, and the competitive pressure my country will face will continue to increase.
There is a huge gap in some key markets for intelligent robots in my country
1. The upstream core parts market is basically dominated by Japanese and European companies, and domestic companies still lack competitiveness in relevant markets. For example, two Japanese companies Nabtesco and Hamonaco dominate the global robot reducer market, while the servo motor market is mainly occupied by Japanese products such as Panasonic, Yaskawa, and Mitsubishi, and European products such as Siemens and Bosch Rexroth.
2. In some back-end application markets, the market recognition and competitiveness of Chinese enterprise products lag behind the international leading level. For example, foreign brands headed by the "four major families" KUKA, ABB, FANUC, and Yaskawa almost monopolize the industrial robot market, occupying more than 75% of my country’s mid-to-high-end product market share. In the market, the market share of my country's products is still basically blank.
The world's leading robotics company is accelerating its localization in China
Industrial robot giants entered the Chinese market earlier and their industrial layout is relatively mature. The "four major families" of robots have successfully achieved localization in the Chinese market. KUKA began to apply for Chinese patents as early as 1985 and began to build a new Shanghai factory in 2014. ABB moved its robotics business headquarters to Shanghai, China, and Fana Kehe Yaskawa and a Chinese company jointly established a robotics company to promote business development. In contrast, service robot companies have just begun to localize the Chinese market. Currently, they mainly achieve penetration through product output and commercial cooperation. For example, iRobot, the leading company in sweeping robots, has launched specific high-end products for Chinese users to open up the market, and Japan's SoftBank Group has joined forces. Domestic companies such as Alibaba and Haier are pushing Pepper robots to enter the Chinese market.
The advantages and challenges of the development of intelligent robots coexist
1. Analysis of the four advantages of development.
1) The market size and demand potential are huge
The scale of my country’s industrial robot market has been ranked first in the world since 2013. In 2016, the supply of robots in the Chinese market reached 87,000 units, which is twice that of South Korea, which ranks second in the world. It is expected that the Chinese market will account for the world in 2020. The proportion will exceed 40%. At the same time, the market potential of my country's service robots and special robots is rapidly unleashing, maintaining growth rates of 25% and 15% respectively. Under the stimulus of increasing aging population and increasing disposable income, my country is likely to become the world's largest in the future. Service and special robot consumer market.
2) Key technical capabilities have reached the international advanced level
Globally, the United States and China are the two most active countries in the field of artificial intelligence technology. According to the "Global Artificial Intelligence Patent Resources Development Overview" statistics, the number of artificial intelligence patents in the United States and China is about 35,000 and 34,000 respectively, while the number of patents in other major countries such as Japan, South Korea, and Germany totals about 40,000.
Domestic technology-based enterprises represented by iFLYTEK, Baidu, and Alibaba in China, together with universities and research institutions, jointly innovate to help my country keep pace with the international leading level in cutting-edge research fields such as face recognition, speech recognition, and group collaboration, and become a smart robot The development has laid a solid foundation for artificial intelligence technology.
3) The industrial foundation and development level have been steadily improved
my country’s robot industry chain is complete, covering upstream and downstream industries such as precision reducers, servo systems, smart sensors, body processing and system integration solutions. With the full drive of leading companies and the active support of local governments, four major industrial clusters in the east, south, west and north have been initially formed in China, including the early-started Yangtze River Delta region, the Pearl River Delta region with a strong CNC industry, and actively introducing external resources In the central and northern China, and the Bohai Rim region, which has the advantage of scientific research talents, the industrial development is showing a good momentum.
4) Emerging forces are becoming a new driving force for accelerating industrial development
Driven by application requirements and transformation requirements, leading domestic companies in various fields have extended from the downstream application side of the industry to the upstream, and began to get involved in the industrial robot business. At the same time, the financial market’s increased attention to intelligent robots also drives the capital advantage to the industry’s development force. Make the conversion.
While seeing the advantages and grasping the opportunities, the industry should also see the challenges and bottlenecks that urgently need to be broken through. At present, there are three main challenges in my country's intelligent robot industry, which are the lack of basic technical capabilities and R&D and design experience, the relatively weak industrial competitiveness, and the risk of foaming.
2. Analysis of three major development challenges.
At present, there are three main challenges in my country's intelligent robot industry, which are the lack of basic technical capabilities and R&D and design experience, the relatively weak industrial competitiveness, and the risk of bubble formation.
Four measures to boost industrial development
How to promote better and faster development of the intelligent robot industry? Four aspects of work cannot be ignored:
1. Grasp the opportunity, give full play to the advantages, seize the strategic window period for the development of the intelligent robot industry, and drive the development of the industry from the application side. Make full use of the development opportunities of current technological updates, market changes and undetermined patterns, rely on the relative advantages of cutting-edge technology and market scale, and comprehensively give play to the advantages of policies and systems to expand and strengthen the local intelligent robot industry.
2. Take advantage of opportunities, overcome difficulties, accelerate the deployment of artificial intelligence technology and new application fields, and realize lane-changing and overtaking. Avoid competing with foreign advanced levels in traditionally disadvantaged areas, aiming at the future direction of technology and industry development, focusing on the areas currently in parallel or leading the way, build and consolidate its own competitive advantages, and achieve overtaking by changing lanes.
3. Resolve challenges, strengthen advantages, build a cooperative ecosystem of equality and mutual benefit, and strengthen the competitiveness of independent intellectual property rights. Give full play to market demand and capital scale advantages, actively cooperate with leading foreign companies, quickly improve its own technical level and industrial capabilities, accelerate the localization of intelligent robots, and create internationally competitive domestic brands.
4. Face the challenges, face the problems squarely, make up for shortcomings and build the foundation in concert to promote the stable improvement of the level of industrial development. We should be soberly aware of the long-term and arduous nature of the development of the intelligent robot industry, fully learn from foreign advanced experience, fully learn from our own development experience, run in small steps, continue to consolidate the industrial foundation, and promote the improvement of the overall level of the industry.