Beijing releases robot "green light" plan, which contains many "highway" opportunities

Recently, Beijing issued the "Beijing Robot Industry Innovation and Development Action Plan ( 2023-2025 ) (Draft for Comments)" (hereinafter referred to as the "Plan") to implement the "14th Five-Year Plan for Robot Industry Development", "Robot+" Application Action Implementation Plan" and "Beijing High-end Industry Development Plan for the 14th Five-Year Plan Period" of the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology and other ministries and commissions.

The plan plans to significantly enhance the innovation capabilities of the robotics industry by 2025, cultivate 100 high-tech and high-value-added advanced products, 100 demonstration scenarios with national promotion value, 100 specialized and innovative "little giant" enterprises, build 5 national-level robotics industry public service platforms, and achieve more than 30 billion yuan in revenue for the city's core robotics industry, creating a domestically leading and internationally advanced robotics industry cluster.

The "Plan" focuses on developing the "1+4" product system of robots, striving to enhance the key support capabilities of robots, comprehensively implementing "robot+" application demonstrations, deeply improving the development ecology of the robot industry, optimizing the spatial layout of the robot industry and guarantee measures. It provides an action guide for issues such as the supply of upstream core components for the robot industry, promotion of robot application scenarios, robot product matrix, and the reserve of cutting-edge scientific and technological talents.

Robotic autonomous core technology is the foundation, and domestic replacement becomes a rigid demand

Since China's robotics industry started later than other countries, supporting facilities and parts supply have long relied on overseas imports. However, in recent years, due to the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic, the Russia-Ukraine conflict and other factors, overseas supply has experienced significant price fluctuations and supply shortages, which has seriously delayed the development of the domestic robotics industry. In order to reduce the obstacles to domestic development caused by external factors, Chinese brand parts manufacturers have emerged one after another, and the trend of domestic parts has gradually formed.

The "Plan" proposes that we should further enhance the industrial basic capabilities of key robot parts and key technologies, establish an integrated mechanism for key technologies, key parts and complete machine applications, and use demand to drive the robot industry to stabilize, supplement and strengthen the chain. This is a huge policy incentive for upstream core parts suppliers of robots. The domestic replacement of parts such as reducers, servo systems, chips, sensors , controllers and end effectors will usher in huge opportunities and markets.

Only by consolidating the foundation of key robot components, breaking the monopoly of foreign components, mastering our own core technology independent capabilities, and not being affected by foreign "strangleholds" can we maintain the foundation for the development of China's robot industry and ensure its stable development.

Multi-scenario application creates a robot system, and humanoid robots usher in opportunities

The Plan focuses on developing the "1+4" product system of robots, giving full play to the advantages of artificial intelligence integration and innovation, stepping up the layout of humanoid robot complete machines, accelerating the development of four types of advantageous products, namely, medical health, collaboration, special/public services, and logistics, to create a highly competitive product system.

According to relevant statistics, the growth rate of medical robots has remained above 30% since 2017, and the market size has increased from less than 3 billion yuan in 2017 to 7.96 billion yuan in 2021; the sales volume of collaborative robots in 2021 was 18,623 units, a year-on-year increase of 87.62%; the market size reached 2.039 billion yuan, a year-on-year increase of 76.84%, a significant increase; special robots had sales of 6.65 billion yuan in China in 2020, and sales are expected to reach 18.52 billion yuan by 2023; the number of public service robots has increased by 296% in the past three years, exceeding 100,000, and the market size is expected to reach 75.18 billion yuan in 2023; and the market size of logistics robots in China in 2021 has reached 12.6 billion yuan, a year-on-year increase of 63.6%, and sales have reached 72,000 units, a year-on-year increase of 75.61%.

"1+4" is to build a product system of humanoid robots and medical health, special, collaborative, and warehousing and logistics robots, open up space for the development of humanoid robots, strengthen the cooperative research and development of humanoid robots and other scene service robots, apply humanoid robots in mature scenarios, and break through the current usage bottlenecks in medical, collaborative, logistics and other scenarios, thereby assisting the construction of the humanoid robot ecosystem and platform, and ultimately promoting the accelerated arrival of its commercial application.

Only with mature products can there be more application scenarios. The full implementation of "Robot +" is an important application of the product system in the "Plan", which is aimed at medical health, smart elderly care, safety and emergency response, etc. At present, the development of domestic robots faces an urgent problem that needs to be solved, which is the lack of scene applications, making it difficult to commercialize good robot products. The "Robot +" application experience center built in the future will create a robot application "model room" to make robots accepted in more scenarios, thereby expanding the popularity and consumption of robots.

School-enterprise cooperation creates more jobs, and majors such as AI robots become popular

The participation of high-level talents is indispensable in the research and development and iteration of robots. They are the continuous driving force for the development of the robot industry. The "Plan" mentions the implementation of a talent promotion plan to introduce and cultivate a group of world-class robot leaders and high-level teams, and to support universities to strengthen discipline construction and cross-integrate related disciplines in robotics, and cultivate high-level scientific and technological talents with high quality and compound characteristics that meet the requirements of the development of the robot industry.

The plan will also support the cooperation between colleges and universities, scientific research institutions and robot companies, regularly select talents to go to leading countries in the international robot industry and other provinces and cities in China for training and study, and strive to cultivate engineering and technical talents, business management talents and compound talents. In the future, companies will provide a large number of technical positions in the field of "robots + artificial intelligence", and related disciplines will become popular disciplines.

At the same time, the combination of talent and location advantages is the key. The Plan advocates giving full play to the advantages of Zhongguancun Science City's innovative resource aggregation and supporting Changping District to take the lead in transforming the innovative achievements of Zhongguancun's robots. These areas have many well-known universities and Internet giants. Introducing robot technology-based SMEs and unicorn companies here makes it easier to seek opportunities for industry-research cooperation and create an ecosystem for the transfer and transformation of robot innovation achievements.

Special policy support and central-local collaboration can lead to faster results

The plan encourages leading domestic and foreign companies to set up robot function headquarters, R&D institutions, training institutions, etc. in Beijing, fully utilize the two domestic and foreign markets and two resources in Beijing, and utilize high-tech industries and related special funds to study ways to help establish robot industry centers through sales subsidies, government procurement of services, etc.

Central enterprises and central institutes are deeply involved in the construction of benchmark robot scenarios across the city, which will guide a number of innovative achievements to be transferred and transformed in Beijing, and will greatly help robot start-ups. In addition, with the catalysis of government subsidies and priority purchase rights, it will be conducive to the formation of a competitive situation for products and promote other companies to update and iterate, thereby accelerating the development of robot technology.