The hottest robot industry will be vigilant agains

The next step of the robot industry: beware of overheated investment

after Chinese leaders put forward the concept of robot on many occasions, more and more local governments and enterprises began to pay attention to this industry. In mid December alone, Guangzhou and Chengdu held high-level robot industry conferences, and several local governments also plan to vigorously develop the robot industry during the 13th Five Year Plan period

Wu Xinzhang, director of the center for advanced electrical engineering at the University of Central Florida in the United States, also felt the change. In recent months, he received several times the amount of technical advice from Chinese enterprises

robots are promoting a new round of industrial revolution in China, Wu Xinzhang said, but it should also be noted that China's market demand is still too small

the next step in robot development: integrating e-commerce

Mao Weiming said that the industrial robot industry can not only enable manufacturers to obtain the latest products in each market field to meet the market demand for high-quality product manufacturing standards through intelligent production, but also deal with the rising labor costs and other issues. It is an important choice to solve the factors such as the rapid growth of China's industrial costs, low added value, environmental resource constraints and so on

Mao Weiming's above statement was interpreted by insiders attending the world robot industry conference as the Chinese version of industry 4.0 plan

however, from the perspective of market development, liruifeng, deputy director of the Robotics Institute of Harbin Institute of technology, believes that although robots can be well integrated and applied as innovation and continue to develop new technologies, the future development of robots alone is not enough to achieve industry 4.0

Li Ruifeng's suggestion is to introduce e-commerce mode. He said: the development of robot industry must integrate the development mode of e-commerce. Small and medium-sized enterprises in the field of new industry are such examples. In the era before industry 4.0, the cost of connecting users of products was huge and had to rely on advertising. However, in the era of industry 4.0, the cost of connecting users of products was 0. The product itself was an advertisement, such as Xiaomi (rolling information), and so on

Qu Daokui, deputy director of the robot National Engineering Center and President of Shenyang Xinsong robot Co., Ltd., also agreed with this view. He said that e-commerce does not talk about technology. Instead, it is enterprises that make great efforts to arm themselves with the latest business model, integrate talents globally, introduce international capital, and develop in China's big market. In addition to their own technology, product research and development quickly seize the market. Therefore, to become an industry, we should first become an enterprise, When the enterprise is large, it should integrate according to various elements of the market rather than do business by itself after having everything. This is also the biggest problem in China at present. It should be carried out through research and development + commercialization

Qu Daokui said that mastering the core technology completely by ourselves is likely to lose a major opportunity for the development of the robot industry. We must do the technology, and the key is to work on the enterprise development mode. In just a few years, China's e-commerce has become the world's leading player. If many export enterprise customers also require companies to study technology every day, they will not develop to the current level

beware of over investment

statistics from the 21st Century Business Herald show that the provinces and cities that have announced that they will establish robot industrial parks include Chengdu, Chongqing, Shenzhen, Kunshan, Henan, Wuhu, Shanghai, etc., with a total of more than 30 parks

but it is worth noting that although the central and local governments are vigorously developing the robot industry, at present, the robot market is mainly concentrated in the automobile manufacturing industry. Data show that the global automotive industry accounts for about 40% of the total number of industrial robots, while in China, this figure reaches 70%

Luo Jun, Secretary General of the international robot industry alliance, is also worried about this phenomenon: Although China, Germany, Japan and other countries have vigorously promoted the development of the robot industry in the past two years, the global robot output value in 2014 was about 30billion US dollars, which was not as good as the output value of a domestic traditional manufacturing enterprise

in this regard, Qu Daokui told the 21st Century Business Herald that there is a real deviation between the current robot high technology and the actual demand of the robot market. The cost of robots is high. To transform a traditional labor-intensive factory into a robot factory, the cost is huge. The labor rate of a robot is equal to 3.6 people, but its cost is about 5 to 50 times. The profit of most traditional manufacturing industries is 6%, but the financing cost of banks reaches 10%. Enterprises do not have a strong incentive to promote the steady and upward economic transformation of China, nor do they have so much capital

governments at all levels are now hotter than enterprises. Now more than 30 or 40 robot industrial parks have been built by local governments. The actual popularity of governments may directly contribute to the blindness of future industries. Qu Daokui believes that robots should be vigilant against the plight of overheating the photovoltaic industry in the future

on the other hand, the lack of innovation has also been criticized by the industry. In 2014, the international robotics Association IFR released a report that China's robot industry lacks technological innovation, including innovative ideas and creative achievements; There are no backbone enterprises that can participate in international competition. Generally, the scale is very small, and the quality and reliability of key components lag behind the world advanced level for 5 to 10 years

Wu Xinzhang told the 21st Century Business Herald: China's robot enterprises basically master the application technology of industrial robot design, but core technologies such as sensors and advanced control rely on foreign countries. Domestic enterprises of robot products of the same quality can earn little profit. Robot production enterprises are generally small, and it is difficult to form scale effects. Enterprise manpower, R & D and marketing costs remain high, Domestic robots lack brand recognition, the market is basically occupied by foreign brands, and domestic product brands lack production practice testing

Qu Daokui also said that another big risk of robot development is the risk of high technology and low added value of robots. Now robots have big problems, high technology, but the added value is now low enough to enter the conventional industry. In fact, robots are typical three high, with high technology intensity, high talent intensity and high capital intensity. However, the performance of such a three high technology industry in the whole market has entered the current situation of very low output, which leads to the problem of who will invest and who will develop robots in the next step, In other words, traditional robots have stepped down from the altar of high technology