The application of industrial robots has a long history, and under the acceleration of the industrial automation process, the demand for "machine substitution" is rising. With the continuous release of the demand for intelligent manufacturing scenarios, the development of the industrial robot market has been further stimulated.
In the new era of industrialization, there has been a new breakthrough in "machine substitution", and the "human-machine collaboration" model is more favored. Especially with the growing demand for popular scenarios such as photovoltaics, lithium batteries, and new energy vehicles, the development momentum of collaborative robots is strong, and new products in the market are frequently released, which have attracted much attention from the industry. Under the combined effect of policy support, capital boost, and technological innovation, the collaborative robot industry has ushered in a golden period of development.
In order to explore the current development of collaborative robots more deeply, analyze the technological innovation, application fields and market prospects behind them, GongKong® specially invited well-known manufacturers in the field of collaborative robots to share their views and experiences on the market and technological development of collaborative robots from different perspectives and dimensions.
01
Respond flexibly to demand and enhance the value of manpower
Collaborative robots break through the "fence" operation, and realize the collaborative operation of humans and machines on the production line with the characteristics of more flexibility, efficiency, safety and simplicity, and give full play to the efficiency of robots and human intelligence.
Different from traditional industrial robots, collaborative robot manufacturers often pay more attention to outstanding features such as safety and flexibility in the process of designing and developing collaborative robot products. "Collaboration and safety are a unity, better security is for better collaboration, they have a common technical basis is the perception and response of force, Geebt through the unique single-chip drive control integrated architecture and ultra-closed-loop technology to achieve the industry-leading force perception and response. He Yan, CTO of Gebt, summed it up.
In traditional production workshops, industrial robots can replace manpower to engage in some dangerous and repetitive work. With the maturity of automation technology, as well as the rapid change and diversity of market demand, manufacturing enterprises need to be able to quickly adjust production lines and production processes to achieve efficient, flexible and low-cost flexible production mode, safe, stable, easy to deploy, and lightweight collaborative robots are widely adopted. The transformation of cobots to traditional factory production methods is obvious. SIASUN application engineers believe that, firstly, the collaborative robot can work with people and no longer need a safety fence, thereby improving the utilization rate of production space and reducing the floor space of the production line; secondly, the collaborative robot is flexible and does not need to carry out major transformation of the original production line, effectively reducing the cost of production transformation; in addition, the collaborative robot can work 24 hours a day, thereby improving production efficiency and reducing labor costs. At present, the cobot market is in a stage of rapid development. With the continuous advancement of technology and the increasing range of application scenarios, more and more enterprises are adopting collaborative robots to improve production efficiency and reduce costs. However, any emerging technology needs to be tested and practiced by the market for a long time from emergence to maturity and widespread application, and the advantages of collaborative robots are undeniable, but they still need to be further improved in terms of comprehensive performance.
"First of all, the intelligence of collaborative robots needs to be improved, and it is necessary to strengthen the perception, cognition and decision-making capabilities. Secondly, the stability, reliability and accuracy of cobots need to be improved to meet the demand for higher quality production. In addition, the cost and price of cobots also need to be further reduced to better popularity and application. SIASUN application engineer said.
Ji Feng, executive director of Changguangxi Intelligent Manufacturing, also said that collaborative robot products generally face the problems of "slow speed, poor trajectory accuracy, and poor rigidity", and will continue to improve the load capacity and expand more application scenarios in the future. In addition, the combination of collaborative robots and automation products such as PLCs and CNC machine tools also needs to be deepened.
02
In-depth scenario application to help reduce costs and increase efficiency
Compared with traditional robots, cobots are able to work with humans and have higher flexibility and safety. With the deep integration of cutting-edge science and technology such as machine vision, artificial intelligence, and flexible technology with robots, collaborative robots will continue to upgrade at the levels of intelligent perception, autonomous cognition, and decision-making execution. Therefore, it can better meet the needs of a variety of industrial scenarios and applications in emerging fields such as new energy and lithium batteries.
The application of collaborative robots in traditional industries and emerging industries focuses on solving different pain points, and SIASUN application engineers analyzed and pointed out that in traditional industries, collaborative robots are mainly used for loading and unloading, assembly, testing, screw locking, spraying, gluing, welding, palletizing and other links on automated production lines to improve production efficiency and product quality. These industries have high requirements for the accuracy, stability and safety of robots, and at the same time, robots need to have good ease of use to meet different production needs. Cobots have the advantage of being able to work in tandem with people, reducing retrofit costs and safety risks, while also being able to quickly adapt to changes in the production line.
In emerging industries, collaborative robots are mainly used in emerging processes and manufacturing links, such as the manufacture of new energy batteries, the assembly of lithium batteries, etc. The product has the characteristics of fast update and iteration, small batch and multi-variety, so it has high requirements for the flexibility and adaptability of the robot, and the robot needs to be able to adapt to the needs of different production tasks. The strength of cobots lies in their flexibility, adaptability, and ease of use, allowing them to quickly adapt to changes in production lines and the requirements of emerging processes. Ji Feng, executive director of Changguangxi Intelligent Manufacturing, believes that the automotive and 3C electronics industries have long supply chains. In the new energy and lithium battery industries, the supply chain is relatively short. While the traditional automotive and 3C electronics industries generally adopt a single-piece flow production method, cobots are flexible and easy to use, which can promote the co-production of different products and quickly respond to changes in production.
In addition, collaborative robots can quickly and accurately complete repetitive and tedious tasks, thereby freeing up manual time and energy to focus on higher-value work.
Whether it is a traditional industry or an emerging field, the fundamental goal of enterprises to pursue cost reduction and efficiency increase is the same. According to the "China Robot Industry Development Report", by 2025, the global collaborative robot market is expected to reach 10.5 billion yuan, with a compound growth rate of 18%. With the adjustment of technology and industrial structure, collaborative robots play an increasingly important role in reducing costs and increasing efficiency.
03
The competition tends to be white-hot, and we are looking for a path of differentiation
At present, the entrants in the collaborative robot market include leading manufacturers of collaborative robots, traditional six-axis industrial robot manufacturers, emerging startups focusing on the collaborative robot market segment, manufacturers of core components of industrial robots, and cross-border competitors in the field of industrial robots. With more and more players entering the game, in the process of competing with the traditional industrial robot stock market, the collaborative robot market is seriously involuted, and the price war has begun, and manufacturers have to dig deep into new applications and new scenarios.
In addition to strengthening technological innovation and research and development, enhancing marketing and brand building, and strengthening cooperation between upstream and downstream industrial chains, SIASUN application engineers believe that we can also develop more potential customers from expanding new application fields and industries. For example, in industries such as aerospace, railways, medical, agriculture, animal husbandry, etc.
He Yan, CTO of Gebt, put forward innovative views from the perspective of product, technology and cost, he believes that high-quality, low-cost, technology-leading products are the key to breaking through the market, Gebo uses the industry's first-class motors and reducers, has extremely high standards for product performance, reduces product costs by improving the self-research rate, reduces the cost of use through rich application functions and ecological cooperation, and realizes the industry-leading collaboration experience through the research and development of a unique single-chip drive and control integrated architecture and ultra-closed-loop technology.
"At present, the automation application solutions suitable for collaborative robots in the market are underdeveloped. Changguangxi Intelligent Manufacturing has an application development team to continue to promote industry applications and empower integrators and equipment manufacturers, rather than a simple price war. Ji Feng, executive director of Changguangxi Intelligent Manufacturing, found another way from the perspective of application.
Whether it is from the technical level, product level, or application level, collaborative robot manufacturers are exploring differentiated development paths. In addition to focusing on the product itself, more and more manufacturers are focusing more on the adaptability to the scene and the convenience of the client. Only by jumping out of the quagmire of price war and consolidating the core technical strength can we make rapid responses and countermeasures to the general trend of market development.
04
The trend of technological change is an inevitable choice to move towards intelligence
At present, collaborative robots are becoming more and more widely used, and they need to be more intelligent in terms of complex operation capabilities, adaptive and reconfigurable assembly capabilities, perception of structured environments, and human-machine collaboration capabilities.
High intelligence is a major common technical demand for a new generation of collaborative robots. He Yan, CTO of Gebt, pointed out that there will be two key trends in the field of collaborative robots in the future: 1. The transformation of task description: the development of large language model (LLM) and large visual language model (VLM) technology makes it easier for humans to convey tasks to robots, without having professional knowledge of robot use. 2. More flexible actuators and more abundant sensors: The combination of dexterous hands, force sensing, and vision can achieve stronger flexibility, environmental adaptability and perception ability, so that robots can replace human work in more scenarios.
In particular, the emergence of ChatGPT, a natural language processing tool, shows that generative AI has a strong ability to understand and generate conversations, which can improve the robot's autonomous cognition and human-computer interaction capabilities, and is expected to accelerate the implementation of more business scenarios.
Ji Feng, executive director of Changguangxi Intelligent Manufacturing, believes that the transformation of the collaborative robot industry is not only in industry, but also in the combination of artificial intelligence is much higher than that of traditional industrial robots. The expansion of collaborative robots in the commercial field will have more application scenarios. With the maturity of welding, spraying and other process packages, the characteristics of collaborative robots will be further strengthened in terms of flexibility, ease of use and rapid deployment. In addition, the adaptation of collaborative robots to automation ecosystems such as PLCs, vision, and force sensors, as well as the integration with artificial intelligence brains, will be further deepened.
The combination of collaborative robots and artificial intelligence is an inevitable trend in the development of science and technology. In the future, it is foreseeable that cobots will rely on AI's powerful computing and learning capabilities to continuously improve their work efficiency and accuracy, and AI will further expand its application scenarios and possibilities by working closely with cobots. In the development of collaborative robots, we have seen the continuous progress of technology and the continuous expansion of the market, as well as the closer cooperation between humans and machines. Collaborative robots not only bring more efficient, more accurate and more reliable production forces to production and service fields, but also create a better production and living environment for human beings. As a new type of partner between humans and machines, cobots will have more room for growth in the future. Although it is currently widely used in traditional 3C electronics, automobiles, metal manufacturing and other industrial fields, there is still more room for scenario expansion in many other industries such as services, medical care, and finance. Gongkong® believes that with the continuous innovation of technology and the maturity of the market application environment, collaborative robots will be more intelligent, flexible and adaptive, with more complex operation capabilities, more efficient assembly capabilities, more accurate environmental perception capabilities and stronger human-machine collaboration capabilities. And in the future of the era of intelligent manufacturing will play an increasingly important role, becoming an important force to promote economic development and social progress.