Image source @ Visual China
Author 丨cube Zhizhuo Bureau, Author 丨 Liu Zheng, Editor 丨 Xiaocai
You may not arbitrarily equate water with ice and snow lakes and seas, but in the era of "robots for everything", some robots are beyond your imagination.
Cameras hanging in the air, speakers that follow your commands, machines that free your hands to sweep the floor for you, they can all be called robots, or rather, service robots.
Different from standardized industrial robots, which only undertake production and manufacturing tasks, there are many downstream applications of service robots, and there is only one role they undertake - to serve all mankind, in addition to production and manufacturing work.
After a brief thought, you will find that the world robot industry is like an ink painting, industrial robots stand, occupying the global manufacturing industry at a dominant altitude, and service robots pour into every tributary of life in an inclusive and broad form.
It is precisely because of this all-encompassing that the young members of this robot family do not yet have a strict definition. For example, IFR (International Federation of Robotics) divides service robots into two categories: consumer and commercial. The service robot in the context of Chinese corresponds to the three major segments of consumer, public and special categories.
Image source: pixabay
In the previous industrial robot inventory, The Cube Zhizhu Bureau depicted the drastic changes in the industrial robot market after the epidemic, and today, we will turn our attention to service robots, restore the butterfly trajectory of global service robots from multiple definitions, and focus on the future trend of the Chinese market.
Since the epidemic, the increase in global service robots has not shown the slow half-beat rhythm of industrial robots "stagnating and rising", but has risen steadily.
Let's start with the group data. According to IFR estimates, the total sales of global service robots in 2020 will be 11.1 billion US dollars (70.9 billion yuan), an increase of 5% over the previous year; the total sales volume of 150,000 units, an increase of 35%. thereinto:
Professional Services Robots: Sales increased by 41% y/y to 131,800 units, and sales increased 12% to USD 6.7 billion.
Consumer service robots: Sales increased 6% y/y with 19 million units and sales increased 16% to US$4.4 billion.
By 2021, the Chinese Institute of Electronics believes that the total sales growth rate of global service robots will be as high as 32.2%.
Between the two data, Cube saw that the impact of the new crown epidemic brought about the function of the service robot.
Killing robots in the field of professional cleaning robots. There are 50 companies in the world that can provide this set of terminals, and with it some technological innovations. The new thing ultraviolet disinfection robot can monitor the human beings in the disinfection range through the infrared camera to avoid ultraviolet rays from harming the innocent.
During the epidemic, the logistics robot market to solve the "last mile" of food and drug distribution is one of the segments with the fastest sales growth in the service robot field in the past two years. Medical and agricultural robots with stronger professionalism have rushed to the market with higher technology.
Although the short-term stimulus of the epidemic has promoted the progress of the service robot industry market, we still cannot ignore the several underlying technologies that have long promoted the replacement of service robots - AI and related cloud computing and 5G.
In the future, the combination of service robots and these technologies will be more closely integrated - this is also the requirement for the service robot industry in China's "14th Five-Year Plan".
Next you'll see:
1. After the epidemic, which products will step on the throttle of the continuous growth of the global service robot market?
2. What are the considerations behind China's definition of a service robot that is different from the international one?
3. What new directions does the 14th Five-Year Plan bring to China's service robots?
01, the global service robot hit the highest growth rate in 5 years
In 2021, there is good news for the global service robot market.
According to the China Institute of Electronics, the world's service robot sales will reach 14.6 billion US dollars, with an annual growth rate of 32.2%. This is the peak growth rate since 2016, and it also makes service robots one of the fastest growing segments in China's tertiary industry.
After a brief moment of excitement, we need to recognize that this wave of growth thrust is coming from COVID-19. The pandemic will come to an end. The Chinese Institute of Electronics expects that the growth rate of world service robot sales will drop to about 27% in 2022.
This shows that after the capital heat subsides, the industry will return to calm, and enterprises need to think about and study the potential applications and markets in the segmentation field. Ultimately, the world service robot market will break the $20 billion sales mark in 2023.
Gardening robot Image source: pixabay
When the impact of the epidemic on service robots weakens, who will continue to export the growth momentum in the field of service robots? The Cube Knowledge Bureau has sorted out 5 professional robot tracks that have recently developed rapidly:
Autonomous Mobile Robots (AMRs) and Delivery Robots (AGVs): Sales exceeded $1 billion in 2020, up 11% year-over-year. In the total output of professional service robots, it accounts for more than 1/3. As production and lifestyles become more flexible in the future, sales of AMRs and robots with similar functions will be further enhanced.
2. Professional cleaning robots: Affected by the epidemic, demand will increase by 92% in 2020, with sales of 34,000 units. It is expected to continue to grow at a double-digit average rate each year from 2021 to 2024.
3. Medical robots (surgical robots): Although it accounts for only 13% of the total sales of professional service robots, it has accounted for more than 55% of sales driven by robotic surgical equipment during the epidemic. This is a high-tech, high-value-added field, with 75% of suppliers coming from North America and Europe.
4. Hotel delivery robots: The COVID-19 pandemic has opened up space for people to be close to each other, leaving room for hotel robots to appear, with sales of $249 million in 2020. Sales of food and beverage production robots in the segment rose 196 percent to $32 million. In the future, hotel delivery robots will still grow.
5. Agricultural robots: During the epidemic period, the performance was stable, with 7,000 agricultural picking robots sold, accounting for 6% of the total sales of professional service robots. With the process of intelligent agriculture in various countries in the world, the segmentation and specialization advantages of agricultural robots are becoming more and more obvious.
After a simple summary, you will find that it is the epidemic that has spawned the demand for professional service robots, and the development of AI technology has changed, filling the gap in demand landing.
Let's look at the field of consumer service robots, here is a hit - sweeping robots.
In 2020, global sales of sweeping robots and mopping robots were 17.2 million units, accounting for more than 90% of the total sales of 19 million household consumer robots. In 2021, sweeping robots will take 27% of the global consumer service robot market share with sales of 10.8 billion.
However, the penetration rate of sweeping robots in the global market is still less than 5%, indicating that there is still a lot of market expansion space in the future with the change of consumption concepts.
After understanding these two areas, The Cube Knowledge Bureau believes that in the future, service robots will continue to be subdivided in application scenarios and service methods, and will go deep into various fields, and the scale of the industry will also grow.
02. China: Planning and layout of two sides of the same coin
Different from the perspective of IFR to divide consumer and commercial service robots, China's classification of service robots is more detailed, mainly including individual, household (consumer) service robots, public service robots, and special service robots. In simple terms, it is the consumer class, the public class and the special class, which meet the needs of to C, to G and to B.
According to this definition, in 2021, the size of China's service robot market will be 39.4 billion yuan, accounting for 47% of the entire Chinese robot market, of which 23% are consumer, 13% are public, and 11% are special.
You must be wondering why the service robots Chinese context are not on the same frequency as IFR.
Splitting the professional service robot into to B and to G reflects two perspectives under the same product - the interpretation of service robots from the two levels of enterprise and government.
The "oneness" behind the two sides is the country's thinking on "unmanned service" and robot substitution:
On the one hand, as service robots are included in various national policies, they have gradually begun to undertake high-demand operations such as medical treatment, underwater operations, search and rescue, and space exploration.
On the other hand, the proportion of the tertiary industry in GDP is gradually increasing, and service enterprises also hope to enhance their brand image and improve user experience through high-tech additions.
The Lifang Zhizhi Bureau believes that under the integration of the two sides, the future public and special service robots will penetrate into daily life in a "basic" multi-level and multi-dimensional manner.
This kind of integration is not simply the accumulation of market share, but in the intersection of the two fields of to B and to G, it generates new connections and business opportunities, and brings a market of hundreds of billions.
For example, to B's cleaning robot originally only provided cleaning work for commercial buildings. During the epidemic in 2020, the market size reached 5.81 billion yuan, with a growth rate of 120%, and by 2021, there will still be a growth rate of 175%.
This is because the cleaning scope of cleaning robots has expanded from the original business building to public areas such as hospitals. It is estimated that by 2025, the cleaning robot can reach a market size of 74.91 billion yuan.
For another example, AMR delivery robots, in addition to the original logistics, park operations, in the hotel, catering industry development is also rapid - in 2021, the hotel, catering terminal delivery robot market size has exceeded 10 billion yuan, is 2.5 times the previous year, it is expected that by 2025, the market size will exceed 30 billion yuan.
The two products were pushed onto the market stage by the epidemic, but under different perspectives, they can still maintain the vitality of subsequent growth.
Cube found that even collaborative robots under the classification of industrial robots, as the core components gradually have domestic substitution, the cost is further reduced, and more and more crossovers to the service field .
Cobots based on multiple joints, thanks to high-precision core components and anthropomorphic ways of working, will move into cooking, dessert making, and more — well, the taste of chefs being able to leave work early.
Robots in the restaurant of the Winter Olympics Source: Sohu News
Eastern philosophy makes the two perspectives not separate from each other, but seeks more business opportunities and resonance.
03, the change of policy: from the policy to the landing
In the seas of service robots, the government acts as a lighthouse, planning and gradually guiding the direction of the ships.
The planning of the "13th Five-Year Plan" stage of China's service robot industry has gone through the stage from "policy" to landing. The macro planning has been completed, the market pattern has been preliminarily determined, so starting from the "14th Five-Year Plan" in 2021, the policy gives three safe routes:
1 Expand the market: Encourage service robot companies to establish product experience centers, while exploring the establishment of new leasing service platforms, while developing new business models such as intelligent cloud services. This can quickly meet the rising consumer demand of Chinese consumers, and can also promote the development of the smart home industry.
2 Domestic substitution: On December 24, 2021, Presidential Decree No. 103 was issued, which mentioned that "the government should take the lead in purchasing domestically produced scientific and technological innovation products that are put on the market for the first time". This means that local manufacturers producing toG special service robots will be the first to profit, and under the trend of multi-scenario cooperation of service robots in the future, the tide of domestic substitution brought about by them will gradually spread to the toB side.
3 Improve the industrial chain: strengthen cooperation between service robot user enterprises, robot enterprises, complete machines and parts enterprises, and jointly carry out technical test verification. The application of induction control, voice control, remote control and other technical means to vigorously develop service robots.
At present, compared with industrial robots, service robots are still emerging industries in the field of robotics, accounting for a relatively low proportion. But what is certain is that service robots will serve all aspects of society in the future, far broader than the manufacturing prospects served by industrial robots.
China is turning to domestic and international dual cycles, and strives to promote the domestic consumer market, which is undoubtedly good for service robots with strong commodity attributes and practicality orientation.
Service robots are tools for "intelligent" service to human beings, and are inseparable from AI technologies such as computer vision, positioning, and intelligent voice. Therefore, the prosperity of the service robot industry lies not only in the market share and penetration rate, but also in whether the core technology can continue to break through, and whether it can quickly enter the actual product from the laboratory.
End
Robotics is always there, it's always the "next big thing," it's so exciting, so gripping, it's easy to get carried away with. —Founder of iRobot, Colin Ingres
The most successful image created by the movie "Super Marines" is the white, fat, soft and considerate "big white", if according to the current definition of robots, the big white should be: robot order - service robot family - professional service robot genus - medical robot species.
Dabai stands out from the many robots in the film, and even overshadows the protagonist, because he has largely changed people's stereotypes of "robots" - sensitive but mechanical, intelligent and ruthless.
Indeed, people are more willing to pin their feelings on service robots than cold industrial robots. Even at present, service robots are far less intelligent than in science fiction movies, and some scenarios have become more and more common:
People began to talk consciously or unconsciously with hospitality robots in hotels, banks, shopping malls, and even "flirting" with robot sisters; in daily home life, from children to the elderly, it has become accustomed to shouting "Tmall genie" or "small degree" from time to time, waking up smart speakers - also known as social robots - or having a meaningful or meaningless conversation or two, or asking for some help.
Some people may see it as a pathological behavior, but look at it from another perspective: everyone is afraid of loneliness, and this kind of companionship anytime, anywhere, comes from the "antipathic" technology, but it is not necessarily just a rational need.