Why is the collaboration robot "fire" willful? Even the capital is betting that this track can win.
In recent years, the robot track has become increasingly prosperous, and this year, the collaborative robot field has ushered in a financing boom. Domestic manufacturers have accelerated their rise. According to incomplete statistics, the amount of financing in the field of collaborative robots in the first half of this year was as high as 4 billion yuan. According to the data calculation, the total amount of financing in the field of collaborative robots is expected to reach tens of billions this year.
Different from the "big block" of the traditional industrial manipulator, the cooperative robot is light and flexible, and can be used in different fields according to different applications of the end effector. At the recent 2022 World Robotics Congress, the exhibition set up a separate exhibition area of "New Forces of Collaborative Robots", which was the first time that many collaborative robots were exhibited in the world, attracting many people‘s attention.
In the impression of many people, the working scene of collaborative robots should be screwing screws in factories. However, at the booth of the World Robotics Congress, collaborative robots have been used in many non-standardized scenes such as catering, retail, education, medical health and so on. The core positioning of collaboration is to be a human assistant, helping people to complete some simple and repetitive things in their work, so as to reduce the overall employment cost and improve work efficiency. For example, in the surgical scene, the cooperative robot can replace the nurse and hand in the surgical instruments in time when the surgeon needs them; Or in the process of vehicle maintenance, give tools to workers at the right time.
Speaking of cold knowledge, collaborative robot is actually a "post-95 generation". As early as 1996, J. Edward Colgate and Michael Peshkin, two professors of Northwestern University in the United States, put forward the concept of cooperative robot. However, the first cooperative robot in the world was not born in the United States.
In 2008, the UR5 collaborative robot developed by Youao Company of Denmark was put into use, which made it possible for anyone to operate the robot arm. After that, from 2012 to 2015, foreign cooperative robot brands surged, and companies such as Rethink in the United States, KUKA in Germany, ABB in Switzerland, Fanuc in Japan and An Chuan in Japan launched one after another. At this time, the domestic market was still at an early stage.
However, after 2015, domestic robot manufacturers seem to have opened up the "second pulse of appointment and supervision", taking the lead in taking the road of flowers and leading the rapid development of the second generation of collaborative robots.
The domestic robots, which started late in the 30‘ s Hedong and 30‘ s Hexi, also completed overtaking in corners in the field of cooperative robots through the application of innovative technologies. According to the 2022 China Collaborative Robot Technology Development Report, in 2021, the share of domestic collaborative robots in China exceeded 90%. In the first half of 2022, the industrial robot market in China increased by 1.5% year-on-year. Under the situation of weak overall market growth, the growth rate of cooperative robots was much higher than the average growth rate of the market and other models, with a year-on-year growth rate of 22.2%. With the maturity of domestic collaboration, the technology is gradually approaching that of foreign investment, and the aggressive market strategy is superimposed. In the first half of 2022, foreign-invested manufacturers suffered a big impact in the automobile and 3C industries, and the market share declined. Cooperative robots have become the representative of robot forces in China, and China is expected to drive the global market rhythm in the field of cooperative robots.
After the carnival, capital will eventually return to rationality. But for the robot industry, the core technology is the hard power, and the fluctuation of the market is only a phased problem. As long as the trend of declining demographic dividend has not changed, robots still have a bright future.
The wind is long, and the new cycle of robots may start just after the cold winter.
