Industrial robots such as welding and spraying are waving their arms in the workshops of emerging industries such as new energy vehicles, photovoltaic manufacturing, and lithium battery manufacturing.

Service robots are used in healthcare, construction, elderly care and other industries, and have become a good helper to meet the needs of people for a better life.

The “Insight” underwater robot and other special robots are playing an increasingly important role in scientific investigation, emergency rescue and other aspects, becoming a good partner for scientists and rescue teams.

As one of the important drivers of intelligent industry innovation and development, robots are profoundly affecting the global scientific and technological innovation, industrial structure adjustment, economic and social development, and integrating into all aspects of human life at an invisible speed.

Recently, Wang Hong, deputy director of the first Department of equipment industry of the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology, introduced that in 2022, the operating income of China’s robot industry will exceed 170 billion yuan, the output of industrial robots will be 443,000 sets, and the output of service robots will reach 6.458 million units. In the first half of this year, the robot industry as a whole maintained a stable growth trend, the output of industrial robots reached 222,000 sets, an increase of 5.4%, and the output of service robots reached 3.53 million sets, an increase of 9.6%.

From the exhibition to see the development of the industry, the exhibition area of the World Robot Conference to be opened on August 16 reached 45,000 square meters, an increase of 5,000 square meters over last year, 40 new face companies participated for the first time, nearly 50 products will be launched at the conference site, the number of new products ranked the highest in history.

With the reduction gear, controller, servo motor and other domestic key components and domestic operating systems continue to make breakthroughs, new products continue to emerge. The volume of welding products in ship industry is too large, which increases the difficulty of welding. In recent years, the crawling welding robot has provided an answer to this problem. The robot can realize automatic inspection and real-time tracking, and promote the efficiency of ship welding by more than 3 times.

Tianyan data show that there are more than 571,000 existing robot-related enterprises, of which more than 81,000 new registered enterprises were registered in the first half of 2023, an increase of 38.4% compared with 2022. From the perspective of geographical distribution, the number of related enterprises in Guangdong, Jiangsu and Shandong ranked first, with more than 114,000, more than 76,000 and more than 47,000. From the perspective of patent data, the proportion of relevant patent applications in the past three years (2020-2022) is more than 16,000, more than 19,000 and more than 24,000.

According to incomplete statistics, up to now, there have been more than 140 financing events in the field of robotics, with a financing amount of more than 80 billion yuan.

The China Robot Industry Development Report (2022) predicts that the global robot market is expected to exceed $65 billion in 2024.

Wang Hong said that the development of China’s robot industry is facing huge development opportunities, but there are also certain difficulties and challenges.

He proposed that on the one hand, we should continue to improve the ability of industrial innovation, and robot companies should participate in the scientific and technological research of robots and jointly develop advanced robot products and system solutions. On the other hand, to further maintain the stability of the industrial chain and supply chain, support the collaborative innovation of upstream and downstream enterprises in the robot industrial chain, and carry out a lot of work in the layout, going out and introducing of the chain master enterprises.

In addition, further promote the robot + application action, focus on typical application scenarios and user needs, carry out robot product innovation verification area, pilot demonstration and promotion services, and drive the system upgrade of the robot’s whole machine and parts with large-scale use, through the above three measures to promote the high-quality development of the robot industry.