Two important guidance documents issued by the Joint Development Committee! This time it is

Recently, the Ministry of Emergency Management and the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology jointly issued the "Guiding Opinions on the Development of Emergency Robots " (hereinafter referred to as the "Guiding Opinions").

This is the first time that my country has made special arrangements for the development of emergency robots, and has clearly proposed goals such as achieving a significant improvement in emergency robot technology by 2025, building a number of application demonstration bases and gradually improving the ecosystem, and comprehensively improving practical applications and support levels. This marks that the development of my country's emergency robots has entered a new stage.

Broad development prospects

Emergency robots are intelligent machine systems that perform tasks such as monitoring and early warning, search and rescue, communication and command, and logistics support. They can replace or partially replace manual work. Their actual application can greatly improve the level of informatization, specialization, and intelligence of emergency management.

Emergency management involves three stages: disaster prevention, mitigation and relief. At present or after a disaster occurs, emergency robots can play the role of "the last line of defense", and their performance directly affects the efficiency of rescue. my country faces different degrees of natural disaster threats every year, coupled with the current situation of high incidence of production safety accidents, and urgently needs to rely on emergency robots to improve the professional response capabilities of emergency management.

Taking the firefighting field as an example, high-rise building fires, underground space fires, and dangerous chemical fires are all high-risk and complex fire scenes, and traditional manual rescue is obviously difficult. If rescue robots are equipped to go deep into the fire scene to conduct reconnaissance, firefighting, and risk avoidance operations, the rescue efficiency and success rate can be greatly improved.

Core technologies need to be tackled urgently

Although emergency robots have considerable potential, my country still has many difficulties to overcome in this niche field, whether it is high-end equipment or core technologies. We need to continue to increase our scientific research efforts and break through a number of basic common technologies.

The Guiding Opinions clearly stated that research and development and breakthroughs should be made in key areas such as the ability to resist harsh environments, improve the robot's payload function and modularity, and enhance the robot's control and intelligence. This is the "shortcoming" of the current emergency robots, and it is also the key to the emergency robots' powerful application capabilities.

In terms of the ability to withstand harsh environments, emergency robots responding to natural disasters such as floods and fires urgently need to improve their ability to adapt to complex outdoor environments, while earthquake rescue robots need to adapt to the narrow spaces of collapsed ruins. All of these test the robots' environmental adaptation technology.

Improving the load-bearing function requires the realization of multifunctional integration of robots. If different types of modules such as environmental detection, target recognition, and material transportation are to be carried at the same time, the robot's load-bearing capacity and control system will also be a considerable challenge. In addition, most emergency robots need to face diverse and complex environments, and the realization of autonomous path planning and collaborative operations requires robots to have higher decision-making and coordination capabilities.

Conclusion

If you want to achieve end-to-end development from demand to R&D to application, policy support is key.

The "Guiding Opinions" clearly state that it is necessary to increase policy support for emergency robots, strengthen policy innovation and coordinated integration, and introduce dividend policies in terms of scientific research funding, industrial support, promotion and application, standards and specifications to accelerate the formation of an industrial ecosystem. Its release has pointed out the direction for the future development of China's emergency robots and provided an action program.

Looking ahead, with the breakthrough of key technologies and the advancement of industrialization, emergency robots will surely achieve great strides in development. It is expected that by 2025, China will have a number of independently developed high-end emergency robot products that will be put into practical use in flood prevention and rescue, forest fires, urban firefighting, earthquake rescue and other fields, forming a group of emergency robot equipment with advanced technology and reliable performance.

We look forward to this day.