Against the backdrop of increasing industrialization levels, the demand for "machine substitution" in China's manufacturing industry is strong, and China's industrial robots market continues to grow. We at EqualOcean track Chinese industrial robots' history and current state and lay out what the future may hold.
Development History: Late Start but Speedy Catching Up
Industrial robots are multi-joint manipulators or multi-degree-of-freedom machine devices widely used in the industrial field. They have a certain degree of automaticity and can realize various industrial processing and manufacturing functions by relying on their power sources and control capabilities. Industrial robots have the characteristics of high work efficiency, strong stability, and high precision and therefore are widely used in various industrial fields such as electronics, logistics, and chemical industries. Key application scenarios of industrial robots include welding, assembly, handling and palletizing, loading and unloading, grinding and painting, and cutting and processing.
China's industrial robot industry started in the early 1970s and has experienced four main stages of development.
(1) Emerging period (1970s-1980s)
In 1959, American engineer Engelberger developed the world's first industrial robot. Subsequently, industrial robots began to be popularized and applied in the United States and Japan, and the technology of industrial robots gradually matured. China started late and only started to develop industrial robots in 1972. In the early stage of development, Chinese industrial robots were mainly series robots. Due to this stage, China's research in the field of series robots is relatively mature. S series robots have the characteristics of simple structure, large movement space, and high flexibility in working methods, which have been successfully applied in various machine tools and assembly workshops.
(2) Development period (1980s-1990s)
After entering the 1980s, China's reform and opening up continued to deepen. Under the impact of high-tech waves around the world, the research and development of China's industrial robot technology have received the attention and support of the government. In 1985, industrial robots were included in the research focus of China's "Seventh Five-Year Plan (Chinese: 中华人民共和国国民经济和社会发展第七个五年计划)" (1986-1990), and the research direction was locked in five aspects: basic technology, basic device development, and handling, spraying and welding robots. During the "Seventh Five-Year Plan" period, China increased capital investment to tackle key problems in the research and development of industrial robots and their parts, completed the development of a complete set of teaching and reproduction robot technologies, and developed spraying, spot welding, arc welding and handling robots.
(3) Application period (1990s-2010s)
After the 1990s, China successively developed industrial robots for assembly, painting, cutting, packaging, and palletizing and formed several robot industrialization bases. In 1992, China's first SCARA assembly robot was designed and manufactured by Panda Electronics Group Co., Ltd. Under the implementation of China's "863 Plan", China's first high-performance precision assembly robot came out in 1995. This is a SCARA 4-axis assembly robot that adopts direct drive technology and has high motion speed and positioning accuracy. It is also equipped with a vision, force sensor, and multitasking operating system. With the rapid development of China's manufacturing industry, manufacturing plants have gradually improved production efficiency and quality requirements. Industrial and manufacturing companies increasingly demand industrial robots that can replace manual labor in repetitive, routine, and high-intensity work.
(4) Rapid development period (from the 2010s to the present)
At this stage, the development of China's industrial robot industry accelerated. In 2012, with the lifting of the ban on the patent of ABB's Delta parallel robot, Chinese robotics companies began to develop and sell parallel robots. In 2015, the Chinese government officially proposed the "Made in China 2025" strategy, and industrial robots were listed as one of the ten key development areas. Under the trend of intelligent transformation and upgrading China's manufacturing industry, the demand for industrial robots has shown explosive growth. Driven by policies and markets, Chinese robotics companies have significantly progressed in robot R&D, design, and manufacturing. The localization process of the three core components of reducers, servo systems, and controllers has accelerated, and all links in the industrial robot industry chain tend to mature.
Current State: Strong Production, Increasing Adoption, and Solid Investment
In recent years, the output of Chinese industrial robots has continued to increase until March 2022. Additionally, China has become the world's largest consumer of industrial robots for eight consecutive years, and sales of industrial robots are showing a growing trend. With the advent of the post-epidemic era, China's industrial economy has shown strong resilience and vitality in dealing with complex and severe situations. Still, the industrial robots markets have suffered under the trend slightly in terms of output growth. According to the National Bureau of Statistics, in December 2022, the national output of industrial robots will be 40,457 sets, a year-on-year decrease of 9.5%. From January to December 2022, the cumulative national production of industrial robots will be 362,700 sets, a year-on-year decline of 4.8%.
In terms of installation, the industrial robotics market in China achieved substantial growth with a record of 243,300 installations in 2021, a rise of 44% compared to the previous year while accounting for half of the worldwide robot installations. In 2021, China surpassed the United States for the first time in robot density ranking, with the number of operational industrial robots relative to the number of workers hitting 322 units per 10,000 employees in the manufacturing industry. The world's top 5 most automated countries in manufacturing in 2021 are South Korea, Singapore, Japan, Germany and China.
Since 2018, China's industrial robot investment and financing events have decreased. As the capital market gradually becomes more rational, financing is increasingly concentrated in some profitable enterprises. In 2021, investment and funding in industrial robots heated up, with 92 investment and financing events and a total funding amount of CNY 19.914 billion. In 2022, a total of 83 events reaching a funding amount of CNY 14.404 billion happened in the Chinese industrial robot market.
Outlook: Policy, Technology and Downstream Application Shaping the Future
The future of China's industrial robot industry will most likely be affected by the following trends:
Policy support for the development of the industrial robot industry
In recent years, China has vigorously developed intelligent manufacturing, making the development of the industrial robot industry gain strategic attention at the national level. In December 2021, the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology issued the "14th Five-Year Plan for the Development of the Robot Industry (Chinese: "十四五" 机器人产业发展规划)," which proposed to focus on promoting the development and application of industrial robots and other products, improving performance, quality and safety, and promoting the development of high-end and intelligent products.
Technological breakthroughs boost the localization of industrial robot brands
With the continuous integration of 5G, big data, cloud computing and AI technologies, industrial robots will realize more functions in the future, promoting the further transformation and upgrading of industrial robots in the direction of intelligence and networking. At the same time, breakthroughs in critical technologies and components such as motion control, high-performance servo drives, and high-precision reducers have been accelerated, which has significantly enhanced the functions and performance of China's industrial robots. It is expected that intelligent industrial robots and industrial cloud platforms will become an essential track for the industrial robot industry, continuously promote the localization, intelligence, and high-end development of industrial robot brands, and the scale of China's industrial robot industry will continue to expand.
The expansion of downstream application fields promotes the development of the industry
Currently, the automobile industry is the most crucial downstream application market for industrial robots in China. However, with the transformation and upgrading of China's manufacturing sector, the demand for robot applications in 3C, semiconductors, new energy, logistics and warehousing, smart home and other fields will show rapid growth in the future. Expansion to other emerging areas is expected to promote the diversification of demand and market expansion of industrial robots, thereby further promoting industry development.
Enterprise Analysis & Insights
With the support of national policies and investment, the density, output and sales of industrial robots in China have continued to show an upward trend. There are more than 114,000 industrial robotics companies in China, and one of them is Stial.
Established in 2005, Stial is an independent robot manufacturer focusing on "active, flexible grinding robots." Positioned as a "flexible technology expert," Stial's core technologies include robot brain (bottom control system), AI sensory nervous system (flexible force control, tactile vision, intelligent tracking compensation), body design, and polishing process plan, which formed a complete closed loop of independent technology. Dozens of national patents, the perfect layout of hardware, software, algorithm, and technology has built Stial's world-leading technical barriers. It has served global customers for more than 15 years. Additionally, Stial is the first company in the world to realize batch grinding of products in different scenarios and has accumulated the world's leading patented technology and industry data.
According to Wang Hongbo, the Founder & CEO of Stial, the company has already started to set up in Canada, Italy and Japan with different priorities. Expanding the talent pool of Stial is the fundamental purpose of establishing the R&D center in Canada. In Italy, it is essential to take advantage of automation technology. Conducting more profound research in the semiconductor and polishing field in Tokyo would be the critical driver of refining Stial's products. Through these three international sites, Stial could reach the North American, European and Asian markets better and accelerate its technological iteration. He added that it is vital for robot companies to absorb talents with global visions, which could better open the foreign markets while reaching a perfect balance between localization and keeping the company's culture.
Wang Hongbo also pointed out that the history of Europe, the United States, and Japan of developing industrial robots could be dated back to the 1970s and 1980s, which is way earlier than China. It is until the 21st century China started to develop industrial robots. The Chinese robot industry is still relatively weak and calls for further development. To do so, continuous technology breakthroughs and product differentiation strategies are needed
About the Interviewee:
Wang Hongbo is the founder & CEO of Stial and has more than 10 years of industry experience. With his professionalism, vision and mind, he has gathered many top talents at home and abroad to join Stial.