Electronics

From September 10th to 12th, the 2021 World Robotics Conference will be held in Beijing. In today's Internet of Everything, robots have quietly sneaked into all walks of life. With the new round of scientific and technological revolution and the accelerated evolution of industrial reforms, the robotics industry is ushering in a window period of upgrading and leaping development.

China has become the backbone of the world's robotics industry

Xin Guobin, a member of the Party Leadership Group and Deputy Minister of the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology, said in his opening speech: "Looking back on the development process of the past five years, the global robotics industry has undergone earth-shaking changes, and China's robotics industry has also taken a big step forward." China has become the backbone of supporting the development of the world's robotics industry.

Wang Yaonan, an academician of the Chinese Academy of Engineering, pointed out that, on the one hand, the transformation and upgrading of the manufacturing industry and the improvement of technological level have promoted the development of the robot industry. On the other hand, human beings have reached a certain stage of development, and robots are needed to solve problems such as aging and recruitment difficulties, especially the shortage of labor in low-end, processing scenes or complex scenes, which will force the development of the robot industry to accelerate.

From the perspective of industrial scale, the scale of China's robotics industry has exceeded 100 billion yuan in 2020. Among them, China's industrial robot market is booming, ranking first in the world for eight consecutive years. The installed capacity in 2020 will account for 44% of the world's total. According to data from the National Bureau of Statistics, from 2016 to 2020, the output of industrial robots in China has increased rapidly from 72,000 sets to 212,000 sets, with an average annual growth rate of 31%. With the continuous release of intelligent demand in the medical, elderly care, education and other industries, service robots and special robots have huge development potential. In 2020, the operating income of service robots and special robot manufacturing enterprises above designated size nationwide will be 52.9 billion yuan, a year-on-year increase of 41%.

It can be seen that more and more industry companies are optimistic about the development prospects of robots and actively participate in the wave of innovation and development of the robot industry. Leading traditional robotics companies are accelerating their expansion to the upstream and downstream of the industrial chain. For example, ABB acquired Astor, one of the largest mobile robotics companies in Europe, and developed automated tractors, with solutions covering production, logistics, consumption and other fields; new robotics companies rely on technology Leading advantages continue to inject new forces into the industry. A number of domestic and foreign innovative companies such as Andy Robotics, Rocas, Aobo, etc. continue to introduce new products and new models to more subdivisions and scenarios. The cross-border layout of technology companies has become a new force in the robotics industry. Companies such as Google, Amazon, and Xiaomi have stepped into the robotics industry and continue to increase their investment in robotics-related technologies and products.

At the same time, the basic capabilities of my country's robotics industry are constantly improving. On the one hand, breakthroughs have been made in key technologies and core components. Key industrialization capabilities such as precision reducers and high-performance servo drives have continued to improve, and some innovations have reached international advanced levels. On the other hand, positive progress has been made in the construction of a common technical support system. Robot high-precision online calibration, firmware diagnosis and health assessment, reliability quality assurance, overall machine performance testing and evaluation and other common technology research has achieved a series of results. Robot performance testing capabilities in some areas have reached the international advanced level.

In addition, the reporter learned from the meeting that the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology is taking the lead in formulating the "14th Five-Year" robot industry development plan. Relevant departments and all participants will work together to build China into a source of global robotics innovation, a gathering place for high-end manufacturing, and a new highland for integrated applications.

Industrial robots move towards "human-machine integration"

Benefiting from the dual drive of policy and market, my country's industrial robot industry continues to advance on the fast lane, with a rapid development momentum and a wide range of products. At the Robot Expo held at the same time as the conference, reporters not only saw multi-joint robots, collaborative robots, DETAL robots, SCARA robots, etc. showing the robot body in the industrial robot exhibition area, but also saw controllers, reducers, servo motors, and sensors. The core parts and components, as well as some popular industry application integration solutions, such as logistics robots, AGVs, unmanned warehousing, etc.

Among them, Siasun's high-end service digital smart factory left the reporter the most impressive impression. According to Hou Bin, Shenyang Sinsong Robotics Project Manager, this "condensed version" of the digital factory is built entirely based on the actual conditions of users such as Sugon, including the deployment of Sinsong collaborative robots, mobile robots, and composite robots. All have a perception system, and have achieved independent research and development from software, hardware to systems. This digital smart factory can realize the "quick duplication" of a certain station, production line, or even the entire factory according to user needs. At present, it has been widely used in new energy, semiconductor, nuclear industry, 3C and other fields.

In addition to accelerating the pace of high-end, industrial robots are still developing in the direction of collaboration. According to Qu Daokui, founder and president of SIASUN Robotics Automation Co., Ltd., robots are moving from the system of "working in a cage" to the direction of "human-machine integration". Collaborative robots have become a very important part of industrial robots. Important new branches, trends and directions.

"The characteristics of human-machine integration, safety and ease of use, sensitivity and precision, flexibility and generality of collaborative robots just make up for the shortcomings and shortcomings of industrial robots. However, collaborative robots also have their own weaknesses and shortcomings. For example, once the load is large, the operation speed Soon, safety cannot be guaranteed. So the relationship between collaborative robots and industrial robots is not a substitute, but a very good complementary relationship."

It is reported that at present, some technical indicators of my country's collaborative robots in terms of load weight, accuracy, and ease of use have reached the international advanced level. Thanks to the improvement of the performance of the whole machine, the backbone enterprises have initially realized the mass production of 10,000 industrial robots. According to FRR's judgment on future trends, collaborative robots may play an increasingly important role in the new generation of robots.

Entering a new stage of "human-machine integration", natural perception and learning capabilities are crucial to industrial robots. Zhang Jiafan, manager of the China Research Center of ABB's Robotics and Discrete Automation Division, pointed out that intelligent robots with functions such as perception and understanding, skill learning, and skill safety will lead the intelligent manufacturing in new scenarios.

Service robots enter the "Golden Decade"

While industrial robots continue to attack and constantly refresh historical results, service robots are also standing on the vent of takeoff. Statistics from the International Federation of Robotics show that since the outbreak of the new crown pneumonia epidemic, service robots have grown against the trend and are expected to increase by 20.7% year-on-year in 2020.

With the outbreak of market demand, various types of service robots such as commercial robots, household robots, medical robots, killing robots, distribution robots, and elderly care and disability robots have quickly penetrated into our life or work scenes, acting as guides and welcoming guests. , Distribution, government services, health care, emotional escort, household cleaning, entertainment and other roles.

At the expo, JD Logistics brought the latest generation of six-joint robotic arms, which can accurately judge and grasp tens of thousands of categories of products, greatly improving the efficiency and accuracy of picking, so as to ensure that products can be delivered to people accurately and quickly. Qingzhi Turing demonstrated a portable throat swab sampling robot. The user uses the self-checking method, according to the robot's voice prompts and video teaching, to quickly and easily complete the throat swab sampling. CLP Technology's Baihong series of lower extremity exoskeleton robots can provide users with hip assistance, and can be widely used in material handling, express delivery, fire and disaster relief, military equipment, elderly care for the disabled, medical rehabilitation and many other fields. The panda robot of Ubisoft is exclusively customized for the China Pavilion at the Dubai World Expo. In addition to the basic functions of traditional humanoid robots, it can also display traditional Chinese writing, drawing, and Tai Chi skills.

Emerging technologies have also contributed to the further outbreak of the service robot market. At present, the high-frequency demand of the scene drives the most mature household robots and educational robots, and the most rapid development demand is driven by medical robots and elderly care robots. “Service robots are more about pursuing human-computer interaction. The development of multi-sensor fusion and intelligent bionic technology has promoted the continuous improvement of robot capabilities.” said Wang Hongbo, CEO of Harbin Institute of Technology Robotics Group Co., Ltd., “Various sensors help service robots. More perceiving and understanding human intentions can also help us do more things, especially the emergence of bionic robots to help humans better shape the appearance of robots, which is more in line with our expectations."

"This year is the first year of the golden decade of service robot development." said Tan Min, chief brand officer of Ubican Technology. "The fact that contactless services can become rigid needs is the cause of the epidemic on the one hand, and the coexistence of humans and viruses on the other. The possibility of becoming more and more a reality, and service robots have truly become our needs."

The autonomous learning ability of special robots has been greatly improved

Special robots are used in professional fields and are a type of robots that have been rapidly developed and widely used in recent years. For example, in the field of construction, more and more construction sites are gradually becoming intelligent, gradually shifting to the direction of human-machine collaboration, fewer humans, and unmanned. Professor Li Tiejun, vice president of Hebei University of Technology, pointed out that construction robots are making "labor shortage" a thing of the past.

In the field of security inspection and explosion prevention, whether it is the inspection and security of urban communities, or the handling of certificates, data investigation, and even risk elimination for public security-related services, there are already a large number of artificial intelligence and special robots providing services.

In the agricultural field, from arable land, to breeding, to fertilization, to irrigation, to spraying, to harvesting, to drying, to storage, to sales, basically all links can be realized by intelligent equipment or special robots. Provide collaboration services. According to Pang Chunlin, secretary-general of the In-vehicle Information Service Industry Application Alliance, in large-scale agricultural belts such as Northeast and North China, unmanned operations in the entire agricultural process are becoming a reality.

Li Qiao, Business Director of Boya Gongdao, pointed out: “Now, robots have made great breakthroughs in their ability to learn autonomously. The shape and movement posture of bionic robots are more similar. Bionics such as fish tail swinging and flapping motion propulsion methods. The shape and propulsion method are more bionic, which will make the bionic propulsion of the product more efficient."

Take the intelligent bionic Arowana robot exhibited by Boya Gongdao as an example. It can swim freely in the water like a real fish, avoid obstacles on its own, and can almost achieve the effect of being fake. According to Li Qiao, this new generation of underwater bionic robots are equipped with vision sensors, sonar sensors, and pressure sensors. They are more intelligent and can integrate well into the surrounding ecological environment, identify and avoid submarine reefs and creatures, and regulate diving. Depth, develop a return route, etc.

Yao Xiujun, head of the Special Robots Department of JD Logistics X Research Department, said that artificial intelligence technology is a watershed. Before the combination of artificial intelligence technology and robots, more robots solved the problem of automation, and solved the problem of product standardization through assembly lines and automated means. , Including production issues and various scenarios, but after the combination of artificial intelligence and robotics technology, it will truly lead robots into the 2.0 era, that is, the era of intelligence.

"In the past, we mainly relied on knowledge, algorithms and computing power to do artificial intelligence. After entering the data-driven era, we mainly rely on data, algorithms and computing power." said Zhang Bo, academician of the Chinese Academy of Sciences and dean of the Institute of Artificial Intelligence of Tsinghua University. In the future, the development of edge computing, quantum computing, electronic computing, 5G, and brain-computer technology will bring more possibilities to the robotics industry.

The key core technology of robots needs further breakthroughs

Starting from the simplest human-computer interaction, to human-machine collaboration, as well as human-machine integration, coexistence, and symbiosis, the form, function, and ability of robots have far exceeded our initial cognition and imagination of the robot world.

With the rapid development and in-depth application of technologies such as artificial intelligence, big data, 5G, and smart sensing, the development of robot intelligence is improving from single perception to global perception, from perceptual intelligence to cognitive intelligence, and from stand-alone intelligence to cluster intelligence. Evolution, leap from fence operation to human-machine collaboration, presenting new features of multi-dimensional upgrades.

At the same time, robotics technology is being widely used in production equipment and life tools, making it capable of global perception, intelligent decision-making, and accurate execution. Robotized intelligent equipment has become ubiquitous. On the whole, the strength of China's robotics industry continues to increase, basic capabilities continue to improve, product quality is increasingly optimized, and integrated applications are deepened and expanded, showing a good momentum of development overall.

However, challenges remain. China's robotics industry is still in the initial stage of development, many key core technologies still need to be further broken, high-end supply is still insufficient, and the level of industry application needs to be further improved. In the next step, we should actively open up cooperation, gather all forces, focus on improving industrial innovation capabilities, consolidate the foundation for industrial development, increase the supply of high-end products, expand the depth and breadth of applications, and join hands with global robots to share development opportunities and promote sustainable development.