Unreleased order demand exceeds 9 billion yuan, and the lithium battery machine vision market is optimistic about growth

In recent years, thanks to the release of strong downstream demand, the machine vision industry has been in a state of high heat all year round. Although capital has begun to return to rationality after a period of crazy financing, with the continuous unlocking of various application scenarios and the continuous improvement of technology, machine vision will still be the most popular baby in the industrial market now and in the next few years.

GGII data shows that in 2022, the scale of my country's machine vision market will exceed 17 billion yuan, a year-on-year increase of more than 23%. Among them, the scale of the 2D vision market will exceed 15 billion yuan, and the scale of the 3D vision market will be nearly 1.9 billion yuan.

GGII predicts that by 2027, the scale of my country's machine vision market will exceed 56 billion yuan, of which the 2D vision market will exceed 40 billion yuan and the 3D vision market will be close to 16 billion yuan. At present, the overall penetration rate of machine vision in my country's industrial scenes is still below 10%. Compared with the huge volume of industrial scenes, the machine vision industry still has a lot of room for development.

From the perspective of application fields, although the 3C electronics industry suffered a sharp decline in 2022, it still ranked first in the downstream application fields of machine vision due to its huge incremental market. GGII data shows that in 2022, the 3C electronics industry is the field with the most machine vision applications, accounting for 25%, and has been ranked first in application for many consecutive years; followed by the automotive, semiconductor, lithium battery and other industries.

In recent years, the lithium battery industry, which has a strong demand for production lines, has been regarded as a key area for machine vision to gain huge growth in the future. In terms of lithium battery shipments, the domestic lithium battery market will ship more than 650GWh in 2022, with a year-on-year growth rate of more than 100%; among them, power battery shipments will exceed 480GWh. It is expected that in 2023, domestic lithium battery market shipments will exceed 1TWh, of which power battery shipments will exceed 800GWh.

Lithium-ion battery machine vision market is optimistic about growth

" The domestic new energy vehicle market is growing steadily, the overseas new energy vehicle market is awakening at an accelerated pace, and the global demand for power batteries continues to grow. Coupled with the improvement of power battery product strength and the introduction of new technologies (lithium iron manganese phosphate, sodium ion batteries, 46 series large cylindrical, semi-solid batteries, etc.), it will provide new growth impetus for new energy vehicles. At the same time, the energy storage field is also forming another independent long slope and thick snow track. Driven by this, the growth momentum of machine vision demand in the lithium battery market is optimistic." An industry insider analyzed.

In this regard, some machine vision companies have also put forward specific data to support this: " In 2022, our overall performance increased by more than 70%, and the contribution to performance growth mainly came from the lithium battery industry . The company's 3D vision integrated with AI has achieved rapid growth in the application of battery cell and module appearance inspection, and its market share has further increased."

"In 2022, orders for lithium-ion machine vision were sufficient, and 50% of the products were delivered , doubling the scale compared to 2021."

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After research and calculation, GGII found that the central value of the demand for machine vision for a single GWh production line of lithium batteries is about 7 million yuan. According to the current expansion plans of lithium battery manufacturers, the production capacity is expected to exceed 2TWh by 2025. Compared with the current production capacity, the cumulative uncommissioned capacity exceeds 1,300GWh, of which the potential unreleased machine vision order demand exceeds 9 billion yuan.

From this, it is not difficult to see that the release of demand in the lithium battery industry has indeed brought huge potential growth to machine vision companies.

From the perspective of specific corporate performance, for example, Optech , which seizes the opportunities brought by the continued growth of the new energy market in terms of machine vision demand, achieved revenue of 1.167 billion yuan in 2022, a year-on-year increase of 33.4%.

Hikvision Robotics has also achieved fruitful results in the lithium battery sector. According to data released earlier on its official website (public account), it has landed more than 70 projects in the lithium battery industry; the coverage rate of the world's top 10 power battery companies exceeds 90%; more than 60 projects have been landed by top customers; and the repurchase rate of top cooperative customers is 100%. (Note: The above data comes from Hikvision Robotics' 2020-2022.5 project data statistics)

From the market perspective, domestic leading battery companies generally adopt segmented bidding to introduce machine vision suppliers, and the penetration rate of machine vision in the production process of lithium batteries has gradually increased. At the same time, the trend of integrating machine vision with the entire line of lithium battery equipment has also become increasingly prominent.

Reflecting on the supply side, lithium battery machine vision companies, based on their own differentiated advantages, either enter from the front-end applications of lithium battery production equipment, or start to penetrate from the back-end visual needs. What's more, a few leading companies already have the ability to integrate the entire line of vision. In the process of more and more projects being implemented, they are improving and upgrading their core technologies and products, and exploring and building more visual application scenarios.

Differentiated competition empowers lithium battery manufacturing

Driven by the demand for high explosives, a number of representative machine vision companies have emerged in the lithium battery industry.

In terms of lithium battery applications, Hikrobot After long-term hardware technology accumulation and software platform breakthroughs, it has launched a complete set of solutions for 3D defect detection and high-precision measurement in the middle and back-end of the lithium battery industry, providing users with better choices. For example, In the detection of tab welding defects , the camera scans the 3D point cloud of the tab welding position, and effectively intercepts abnormalities such as welding slag and welding thickness through the height threshold; the detection of bulges after the film of square shell batteries , through the height information difference in the depth map, effectively identifies the bulges, damages, wrinkles and other defects after the film is coated.

Supersonic With "AI+machine vision" technology as the core, it provides intelligent equipment and system solutions based on machine vision for industries such as lithium batteries. For example, Supersonic's 3D solution has currently achieved a misjudgment rate of less than 0.5%, and continues to optimize equipment detection efficiency and accuracy through a series of solutions. Among them, the Supersonic power battery top cover welding inspection machine realizes various welding defect detection through 3D point cloud engine calculation, and uses AI artificial intelligence algorithms to perform 360-degree full appearance inspection without dead ends. At the same time, it supports online real-time detection and can be embedded in the pack production line. The detection items cover flange size, pits, wavy edges, pinholes, protrusions, broken welds, burst points, etc.

In addition, Supersonic is also actively promoting the complete line solution for the lithium battery industry , and has laid out the entire process including coating roller pressing, slitting, strip die cutting, lamination/winding, film coating, welding, battery finished products, electrical testing, battery modules, etc.

Facing the inspection needs of different process stages in the lithium battery industry, LMI Gocator 3D vision solution combines products and applications and iteratively upgrades to help customers achieve visual inspection coverage of each process of lithium battery. Its high-precision, high-speed, and complete 3D imaging product features enable it to achieve accurate inspection in applications such as pre-spot welding, top cover welding, sealing nails, battery cell blue film appearance inspection, and module end Busbar pre-welding/post-welding. It can truly help the lithium battery industry project to land, actually solve the pain points of the lithium battery industry, provide inspection yield, and effectively shorten the production line preparation time.