Industrial robots still need to climb over the obstacles, and it is urgent to make up for the shortcomings of basic components

Robots work on the production line of the welding workshop of the Hyundai Cangzhou factory in Beijing. Photo by Xinhua News Agency reporter Mou Yu

At the 2021 China International Trade in Services Fair, Baidu's "EasyDL Gesture Recognition Robotic Arm" attracted many viewers to stop. It is understood that based on the customized gesture recognition model of Baidu EasyDL zero-threshold artificial intelligence development platform, the edge deployment is integrated in the robot arm through the software and hardware integration solution, which can realize the recognition and real-time interaction of gestures. The robot arm can replace the quality inspection staff in industrial production, and complete the tasks of product quality inspection and sorting quickly and accurately, saving costs and improving efficiency for enterprises.

Industrial robots are the source of power for the intelligent transformation and upgrading of the manufacturing industry. Wang Weiming, director of the First Department of Equipment Industry of the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology, introduced that the mainland has become the world's largest consumer of industrial robots for 8 consecutive years, and its application fields have covered 52 industry categories and 143 industry categories such as automotive, electronics, metallurgy, light industry, petrochemical, medicine, etc., which are greatly changing people's production methods.

Widely used to drive production growth

During the "13th Five-Year Plan" period, through continuous innovation and deepening application, the mainland robot industry has shown a good momentum of development. Among them, the output of industrial robots increased from 72,000 sets to 212,000 sets, an average annual growth of 31%. "Rapid growth benefits from policies, the support of production capacity and the guarantee of application scenarios. In addition, the new crown pneumonia epidemic is still spreading around the world, and China relies on a complete industrial chain and strong epidemic prevention and control measures to undertake manufacturing orders transferred from other countries to China. In the view of Wei Qijia, director of the Industrial Economic Research Office of the Forecasting Department of the State Information Center, the increase in foreign trade orders has severely challenged the development model of relying on traditional low-cost factors to expand production capacity, and manufacturing enterprises urgently need to increase production capacity through industrial robots, and their demand is further stimulated.

Wang Hong, deputy director of the First Department of Equipment Industry of the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology, said that the acceleration of the pace of intelligent transformation and upgrading of the mainland manufacturing industry has made the application scope of industrial robots continue to expand. The density of industrial robots in mainland China increased from 51 units per 10,000 units in 2015 to 246 units per 10,000 people in 2020, reaching nearly twice the global average.

"The mainland's strong domestic market advantage is a necessary condition to support the widespread application of industrial robots." Wei Qijia introduced that industrial robots are mainly concentrated in the fields of logistics and packaging processing. Among them, logistics robots replace manual cargo handling, and packaging processing robots are mainly reflected in the flexible manufacturing, packaging and precise gluing of specific products.

In order to promote the high-quality development of industrial robots, the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology, the Ministry of Science and Technology and other 15 departments jointly issued the "14th Five-Year" Robot Industry Development Plan, which clearly stated that the density of manufacturing robots will double by 2025. How to achieve the above goals, Wei Qijia believes that on the one hand, it is necessary to further converge high-quality resources to the manufacturing field and lay a solid foundation for the high-quality development of industrial robots; on the other hand, industrial robots, as high-end equipment with high degree of technological integration, complex application environment and more professional operation and maintenance, have multi-level demand for application-oriented talents, and should focus on the cultivation of professional and technical personnel.

For specific application scenarios, Song Xiaogang, executive director of the China Robot Industry Alliance, suggested that for the fields of automobiles, aerospace, rail transit, etc., high-precision and high-reliability welding robots should be developed; for the semiconductor industry, develop vacuum (clean) robots such as automatic handling, intelligent movement and storage, civil explosives production robots with explosion-proof functions, AGV, unmanned forklifts, sorting, packaging and other logistics robots; for 3C, auto parts and other fields, develop large load, light, flexible, double-arm, Mobile and other collaborative robots.

It is urgent to make up for the shortcomings of basic components

"During the '13th Five-Year Plan' period, key robot components such as precision reducers, high-performance servo drive systems, intelligent controllers, and intelligent integrated joints have accelerated breakthroughs and innovative achievements have emerged, and the performance of the whole machine has been greatly improved, the functions have become more and more abundant, and the product quality has been increasingly optimized." Wang Weiming said that compared with the world's advanced level, there is still a certain gap in the mainland robot industry, such as the quality stability and reliability of key components can not meet the needs of high-performance machines, and the supply of high-speed, high-precision, heavy-duty and other high-performance machine products is lacking.

Wei Qijia believes that although the mainland has a certain foundation in the basic components related to industrial robots, there is a big gap with foreign products in terms of quality, reliability, product series, or batch supply, especially in terms of high-performance AC servo motors and high-precision reducers. "At present, the core key components of the robot produced by the mainland rely heavily on imports, so there are problems such as low cost performance, core technology being controlled by people, and poor competitiveness, and we must attach great importance to the development of the industrial robot parts industry."

In order to make up for the shortcomings of the development of the industrial robot industry, the "Planning" proposes to promote the joint research of production, education and research to improve the function, performance and reliability of key components of robots. Among them, in the "Robot Key Basic Improvement Action", specific goals are put forward for robot parts: research and development of RV reducer and advanced manufacturing technology and process of harmonic reducer, improve the accuracy retention (life) and reliability of the reducer, reduce noise, and achieve large-scale production; optimize high-performance servo drive control, servo motor structure design, manufacturing process and other technologies, and develop high-precision, high-power density robot-specific servo motors and high-performance motor brakes and other core components; research and development with high real-time, High reliability, multi-processor parallel work or multi-core processor controller hardware system, breakthrough multi-joint high-precision motion solving, motion control and intelligent motion planning algorithms, improve the intelligent level of control system and safety, reliability and ease of use.

Accelerate the improvement of industrial innovation capabilities

Insufficient technology accumulation, lack of original research, theoretical research, and system design capabilities are also bottlenecks restricting the development of industrial robots in mainland China. How to enhance the innovation ability of the industrial robot industry? In Song Xiaogang's view, on the one hand, it is necessary to focus on the needs of industrial development and break through common technologies such as robot system development and operating systems; on the other hand, it is necessary to encourage backbone enterprises to jointly carry out collaborative research and development of robots, promote the standardization and modularization of software and hardware systems, and improve the efficiency of new product research and development.

"Although there is a significant gap between domestic enterprises and foreign countries in robot technology, there are many factors affecting the accuracy and reliability of the system in the system integration project of practical application of industrial robots. This is determined not only by the robot itself, but also by factors such as control systems, attachment fixtures, transmission equipment accuracy, vision sensors, and so on. Wei Qijia told reporters that system developers and robot companies are encouraged to coordinate development, and use the technical advantages in the field of system integration to make up for the lack of domestic robot monomer technology, so that the overall solution can have the ability to compete with international giant enterprises in the market.

"It is necessary to give full play to the role of research and development institutions such as key laboratories of robotics, engineering (technology) research centers, and innovation centers, strengthen cutting-edge and common technology research, accelerate the transfer and transformation of innovative achievements, and build an effective industrial technology innovation chain." At the same time, we will promote the integration and application of new technologies such as artificial intelligence, 5G, big data, and cloud computing, and improve the level of intelligence and networking of industrial robots. Song Xiaogang said.