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All of the information stated in this article is based on reliable sources, and the specific information is detailed at the end of the article
In March this year, the American think tank published an article on the mainland's industrial robot industry, which said:
Although the mainland's industrial robot technology is still lagging behind the United States, according to the current speed of development, it will surpass the United States in a few years and become the world leader in this field.
However, the United States has always been unkind to the mainland, and although it is boasting about the mainland's technology, is there no selfishness behind it?
for the importance of industrial production
Most people don't know the definition of an industrial robot, so it's understandable why Americans are jealous of the mainland's speed of technological development.
Industrial robots, as the name suggests, are a robot system dedicated to serving industrial production, and its appearance is not the humanoid machine that people imagine, and the actual specific shape is varied, mainly depending on its service function.
Today's industrial robots are generally divided into three types, namely: multi-joint robots, plane multi-joint robots and coordinate robots.
In industrial production, industrial robots play an irreplaceable and important role. Industrial robots are generally equipped with the most advanced sensors, actuators and control systems, which greatly strengthens the ability of the robot itself to perceive the environment and produce independently, which is conducive to improving industrial production efficiency and reducing industrial production costs.
For today's manufacturing industry, industrial robots have long been an indispensable part. Various fields of manufacturing, such as automobile manufacturing, semiconductor industry, lithium battery industry, etc., all require the participation of industrial robots to improve production efficiency.
Take the assembly of parts as an example, in industrial production, almost every instrument uses a large number of parts. As a result, the loading and unloading of parts has become an indispensable part of industrial production.
In the past, parts loading and unloading were carried out by manpower, but there are two major drawbacks in manual assembly:
First, the workload is huge, some instrument parts are even as many as thousands, the speed of manual assembly is too slow, and the work efficiency is very low; second, the quality of work cannot be guaranteed, many instruments have high requirements for the precision of parts, and manual assembly will inevitably cause errors, so that the quality of the instrument will be affected.
The use of industrial robots can effectively change this situation, the assembly automation of parts greatly accelerates the assembly speed, improves the assembly efficiency, reduces labor costs, in addition, the machine assembly rarely makes mistakes, and the overall quality of the product is enhanced.
The important role of industrial robots in industrial production is the reason why the Americans attach so much importance to it, which also explains why the progress of industrial robot technology in mainland China will cause the United States to be vigilant:
The level of a country's industrial robot technology basically determines the strength of the country's manufacturing industry, and in recent years, China's technology in this area has advanced by leaps and bounds, which means that China's manufacturing industry is also making rapid progress.
The decline of industrial robots in the United States
The world's first industrial robot was born in New York, and since the sixties of the last century, Americans began to use industrial robots in factory machinery production, successfully realized mechanized assembly line production, and greatly improved production efficiency.
It can be said that the Americans are pioneers in this industry, both in terms of R&D and application.
However, now the predictions of American think tanks show that the American industrial robot industry has begun to lag behind China. In fact, as early as the early eighties, the industrial robot industry in the United States was already surpassed by Japan.
To this end, the White House has also introduced various policies to try to save the country's robot industry, but it backfired, and now the United States has not only failed to overtake Japan, but has been overtaken by China.
So, why did the United States, which was once an industrial pioneer, end up in this situation? In general, there are several reasons:
First of all, the technical problem, since the eighties of the last century, Japan has achieved the United States of industrial overtaking, the United States before the development of the second generation of industrial robots, since then has maintained a technological advantage over the United States, until today the United States industrial robot technology is still lagging behind Japan.
Then there is the lack of government support. The reason why the robot industry in the United States will be surpassed by Japan is largely because of the lack of support for the industry.
In the new century, although the White House has tried to introduce some policies to subsidize the robot industry, the results seem to be obviously not ideal.
What's more, today's national policy of the United States is to focus on the research and development of high-precision technology, and industrial robots, as traditional industries, are obviously not the main support objects of the US government, and naturally cannot get more support.
The reason why Germany, Japan and now China are vigorously developing industrial robots is because there are huge application fields, such as automobile manufacturing, while the traditional manufacturing industry in the United States is shrinking, so the application fields required by the industrial robot industry are becoming less and less.
According to the data given by the American think tank, the average number of industrial robots in the United States is less than 300 per 10,000 workers, which is nearly 100 less than China, which means that the production and application of industrial robots in the United States is far inferior to China.
We have also said before that the number of industrial robots represents the degree of development of a country's manufacturing industry, according to this trend, the gap between the manufacturing industry in China and the United States will continue to widen in the future.
Layout of domestic industrial robots
The mainland's industrial robot industry has grown from scratch, from a poor and white to today's leading world, and has also gone through a long and arduous road.
When the mainland began to develop domestic robots, the industrial robot industry in the United States has been developing for 20 years, and Europe and Japan have quite complete technology in this regard.
In the face of the technological gap of 20 years, the Chinese people have not flinched: when we were poor and white, we could even build an atomic bomb! How can we be afraid of difficulties in front of a small robot now?
In 1977, at an intra-party meeting, Continental officially included industrial robots as a key project in the development plan, and since then, the grand layout of domestic industrial robots for decades has begun.
At that time, only the United States, Japan and Europe had the relevant technology of industrial robots, and China could be said to be a blank in this regard, so the progress of research and development was quite slow.
Since there has been no breakthrough for a long time, the mainland has decided to send a technical team to the United States, Japan, and European countries to "learn from experience," hoping to learn advanced foreign technology and then use it for its own use.
But what everyone didn't expect was that the mainland's technical team was closed in various countries. It turned out that due to the difference in the international camp, these countries united to implement a large-scale technological blockade on the mainland, and industrial robots, as the most advanced cutting-edge technology, are naturally the key blockade objects, and it is absolutely impossible for the mainland to master.
The refusal of foreigners did not shake our determination to develop R&D, but prompted us to work hard and make domestic robots to fight for a breath.
Researchers have only relied on a few sentences of translation from abroad and the foreign robots they have seen for five years.
In 1982, after five years of research, the scientific research team finally launched the first domestic robot: the SZJ-1 robot.
Although compared with the United States, Europe and Japan, the mainland's industrial robot is quite backward, but it proves one thing, that is, the Chinese are fully capable of breaking through the foreign technology blockade and taking a path of their own in the research and development of industrial robots.
With this encouragement, the mainland has begun to make technological breakthroughs in domestic robots, striving to develop more advanced industrial robots and completely break the enemy's technological blockade.
In 1993, Shenyang Automation Institute successfully developed the first set of domestic handling robots, and made a major breakthrough in the controller, the core component of industrial robots.
In 2011, Greenland Harmonic made a technological breakthrough in the field of domestic reducers, and in 2023, the localization rate of IGBT chips exceeded 30%, marking a major progress in the server system of Continental.
So far, domestic industrial robots have made major breakthroughs in the three core components of controllers, reducers and servos, and the layout of the mainland in the industry for 50 years has finally come to fruition.
As of 2023, the annual output of industrial robots in mainland China will exceed 400,000 units, which is an extremely significant breakthrough compared with 30,000 units in 2015.
In 2015, the domestic production rate of industrial robots in mainland China was only 17.5%, and by 2023, this data has risen to 35%;
Although from a technical point of view, domestic industrial robots have not completely surpassed the United States, but the technology will eventually fall on production, the current degree of production and application of industrial robots in the mainland is much higher than that of the United States, which will further widen the gap between the manufacturing scale of China and the United States.
Taking 10,000 steps back, according to the speed of technological development in this field, it is only a matter of time before the mainland surpasses Europe and the United States and leads the world in this regard.
Resources:
Global Network - US Think Tank: It is only a matter of time before China leads robot innovation
China Youth Network - The rapid development of industrial robots in mainland China and the increasingly obvious trend of intelligence
Guangdong Zhongli Intelligent Equipment - the development history of industrial robots in various countries