China's future robot market development is promising

The International Data Corporation (IDC) recently updated its China Robot Market Report, which shows that the rapid development of China's robotics technology is closely related to the outbreak of the third wave of artificial intelligence. As a major branch of artificial intelligence, China's robot market continues to penetrate into all walks of life driven by emerging technologies such as the Internet of Things and 5G. 　

IDC data shows that five major industries, namely discrete manufacturing, process manufacturing, consumer industry, retail and healthcare, will lead the development of China's robot market. 　

From Made in China to Created in China, as robotics technology gradually develops, its widespread application has also promoted the formation of automated and unmanned factories. Under the call of "Made in China 2025", intelligent equipment such as industrial robots and robotic arms have begun to become the main force in discrete manufacturing and process manufacturing. At the production site of discrete manufacturing enterprises, CNC machining centers, intelligent robots, three-coordinate measuring instruments and all other flexible manufacturing units are automatically scheduled, and workpieces, materials and tools are automatically loaded and unloaded, gradually reaching an unmanned fully automated production mode. The entire production process does not require human participation, and "unmanned" intelligent production is gradually being realized. 　

The development of all technologies is based on human laziness, and the development of robotics is no exception. In the field of consumer robots, the emergence of many service robots such as educational robots, catering robots, and sweeping robots has greatly facilitated and made people's lives smarter. The China Electronics Society estimates that the scale of China's service robot market will be US$1.84 billion in 2018, a year-on-year increase of about 43.9%, which is higher than the growth rate of the global service robot market. Judging from the current market situation, many Chinese companies have a more advanced awareness of the application of service robots compared to European and American companies, and Chinese service robot companies are currently well prepared in terms of capital chain. This also means that China's service robot market should be able to usher in relatively large growth in the next few years. 　　

In the retail industry, the emergence of retail robots has also solved many problems in the new retail industry. Simply put, it integrates service, shopping guide and sales, can collect data, and carry out retail industrialization transformation. In addition, current retail robots basically have face recognition functions, which can not only identify users, but also communicate with users in depth to understand users' in-depth needs. In addition to retail robots, the emergence of drones, logistics robots and other robotics technologies is also constantly changing the retail industry, constantly releasing and creating more new retail scenarios. 　　

According to the current general trend, robots are becoming an important part of daily medical work. In the healthcare industry, the effective application of robotics technology can not only improve the work efficiency of doctors, eliminate medical errors to a certain extent, narrow the medical gap, but also enable medical patients to obtain high-precision medical services. It can be said that robots embedded with AI will completely change the future of healthcare. However, it should be mentioned that, at present, the cost of surgical robots is still relatively expensive, and related more advanced technologies are still under development. However, as surgical robot technology matures, this should be solved. 　　

In addition to discrete manufacturing, process manufacturing, consumer industry, retail industry and healthcare industry, China's security robot market is also growing. 　　

Different from the working concept of other service robots, security robots are designed to assist humans in completing security protection work under full human control. They are widely used to solve safety hazards, patrol monitoring and disaster warning, etc., and appear at the first scene before, during and after the dangerous situation occurs. In other words, the essence of security robots is to replace the traditional and laborious "human defense + physical defense" security system to meet modern security needs. Relevant data show that in the domestic market, the scale of the domestic security market is expected to advance to 900 billion yuan in 2018, and the market scale is expected to reach 1 trillion yuan in 2020. While the domestic security market embraces the "blue ocean" of billions of yuan, the highly intelligent technology of security robots has also brought new business opportunities to the security market. The security robot market, where one robot can replace the work of 2.4 security personnel, has also brought great driving force to the rapid development of the Chinese robot market. 　　

Dr. Jingbing Zhang, research director of IDC Global Robotics and Asia Pacific Manufacturing, pointed out that with the knowledge and experience accumulated over the past period of time, Chinese robot end users have become increasingly demanding on robot technology. This has brought opportunities and challenges to robot suppliers and solution providers to a large extent, forcing them to start from understanding the real needs and pain points of end users. This is also the key to the success of robot technology in the Chinese market.