What hinders the development of domestic industrial robots?
The degree of industrial automation in a country is inseparable from the development of industrial robot industry. In recent years, China's industrial robot industry has made rapid development, but also gradually exposed many problems. It has to be acknowledged that compared with the four major industrial robot powers of Japan, the United States, Germany and South Korea, domestic industrial robots are at least 10-15 years behind. China's industrial robot market has long been occupied by foreign enterprises represented by the "four families", and domestic brands are in a weak position. The most obvious was in 2017, when the market share of domestic brands dropped from 33.2% in 2016 to 27.3%.
What hinders the development of industrial robots in China?
1、 Late start, congenitally deficient
China's industrial robot industry started in the early 1970s, far behind the developed countries. By the 1980s, when industrial robots in Japan, the United States and Germany had entered a period of peak development and were widely used in automobiles, aerospace, food, instruments and other fields, China's industrial automation equipment was very scarce, and the industrial robot industry was still in its infancy.
China's industrial foundation is weak. In a period after the reform and opening up, it is still dominated by labor-intensive low-end industries. There is an excess of cheap labor force, which is sufficient to meet the production needs. The degree of dependence on automation equipment is not high, and the demand for industrial robots in large quantities has not yet emerged. After Japan introduced the robot technology from the United States, the country has adopted various encouraging policies to vigorously develop and promote in order to alleviate the problem of labor shortage; The European Union has spent a lot of money to support new robot research projects, covering the entire value chain from technology research and development to product deployment, and has reached strategic cooperation with the industry and academia, which has led to a widening gap between China's robot industry development and that of developed countries.
The late start has brought many problems: insufficient theoretical support, great leap forward in technology, talent gap, immature market, imperfect industrial supporting facilities, nonstandard industry standards, and few application scenarios, which have still had many impacts on the development of robots in China.
2、 Backward technology and process
In the cost chain of industrial robots, the cost of upstream core parts accounts for the highest proportion, accounting for more than 60% of the overall production cost. Industrial robots have three core parts, namely, reducers, servo systems and controllers, which account for 31.2%, 19.6% and 10.4% respectively. Most of these core parts are imported. The proportion of imported controllers and servo motors is about 80%, and the proportion of imported reducers is about 75%. Therefore, the production cost is higher than that of foreign enterprises, and the product price remains high.
Why do domestic integrators and robot enterprises not buy domestic core parts to reduce costs? Because the precision, stability and reliability of domestic core parts cannot meet the requirements, they can only meet some low-end markets. Core technology has been restricted by people for a long time, which has become the main bottleneck restricting the development of industrial robots in China.
Even if the technical research and development meet the standards, the production process can not meet the requirements, the industrial automation equipment is insufficient, the automated production line is not perfect, and there is no mature automated assembly line, which still can not produce first-class core parts. Therefore, in order to pursue products that meet advanced technical standards, many domestic core parts enterprises purchase imported production and R&D equipment. This has also led to the homogenization of the products of all enterprises and the lack of core competitiveness.
Zhao Jie, director of the Robotics Research Institute of Harbin University of Technology, pointed out that "although there are nearly 100 colleges, universities and enterprises engaged in the research and production of industrial robots in China, the research of each is too closed, the robot research and development force is scattered, and the same technology research is repeated too much."
3、 The product is immature and the cost of trial and error is high
Whether it is the industrial robot body or the core parts, the domestic market is controlled by joint ventures or foreign enterprises for a long time. There is no market for domestic industrial robots, lack of funds and opportunities for practical improvement, and technology, products and applications are not well developed.
In the automotive industry, the largest application field of industrial robots, domestic manufacturers tend to actively or passively purchase mature robots from four families. BMW globally purchases ABB robots for material handling, gluing and spot welding in the factory. BAIC Zhuzhou Plant uses KUKA robots. Geely Automobile uses ABB robots for all welding work. Great Wall Automobile has more than 500 ABB robots and KUKA robots on the production line of the punching and welding workshop, with an automation rate of 100%.
For ordinary domestic enterprises, cooperation with new brands means bearing the risk cost, so they are more willing to pay a premium to buy mature products of joint venture foreign enterprises.
4、 Lack of talents
As a high-end equipment with high technology integration, complex application environment and professional operation and maintenance, industrial robots have multi-level talent needs. It is mainly divided into four levels: R&D engineer, system design and application engineer, commissioning engineer and operation and maintenance personnel.
The robot research and development integrates many disciplines such as computer, mechanical engineering, electronics, information sensors, control theory, materials, artificial intelligence, bionics and other forms of high-tech. Although domestic enterprises and research institutions increase the introduction and training of talents in the direction of robot technology research and ontology development, there is still a big gap with developed countries. In 2016, Southeast University opened the first undergraduate major of "Robotic Engineering" in China, which increased to 86 in 2018. These undergraduate colleges and universities offering this major can only start to send talents to the society after 2020 at least. In view of the complexity of industrial robot systems and the wide range of disciplines involved, the time will be longer if they want to pursue master's or doctoral studies.
The training of applied talents such as on-site commissioning, maintenance operation and operation management is still lacking. According to the development plan of the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology, by 2020, the installed capacity of industrial robots in China will reach 1 million, and the corresponding demand for industrial robot application talents such as operation and maintenance, system installation and debugging, and system integration will reach about 200000. This part of talents often come from the electrical automation technology, electromechanical integration and other majors of domestic higher vocational colleges. They need to receive secondary training before engaging in work. Short term training is difficult to meet the job requirements, so the structural contradiction of applied talents and talent shortage are extremely prominent.
5、 Immature market and vicious competition
It is an inevitable process that the emergence of emerging industries leads to the brutal growth of enterprises. At present, China is still in the initial stage of industrial intelligence development. Many robot enterprises have started all over the country, and the robot industry is expanding blindly. In the absence of industry standards and norms, there are vicious competition of low quality and low price, millions of new products developed are rapidly "imitated", product quality is uneven, unqualified products are popular, and other problems, which cause market chaos and seriously hit the confidence of the industry, It hinders the development of domestic industrial robots.
Late start, backward technology, poor product performance, inability to expand the market, lack of capital investment, and failure to develop technology. Although there are still many problems with domestic industrial robots, we should see that on the way to survival, innovation and development, the industrial robot industry in China has emerged a number of outstanding domestic enterprises, such as Guangzhou, Evert, New Star and Eston, taking the robot body manufacturer as an example, which brings hope to domestic industrial robots.
