In the new journey of China's high-quality economic development, industrial robots play a vital role. As an important force in the transformation and upgrading of the manufacturing industry, the development level of industrial robots directly affects the competitiveness of the mainland manufacturing industry. In recent years, China's industrial robot industry is undergoing a profound change, and domestic brands are rising, striding towards the goal of independent controllability and high-end.
The domestic market demand is strong
The rise of China's industrial robot industry is inseparable from the rapid growth of domestic market demand. With the fading of the demographic dividend and the rising labor costs, manufacturing enterprises are facing huge pressure of "machine substitution". In this context, the application demand for industrial robots is increasing day by day. The deep integration of the new generation of information technology and manufacturing has given birth to emerging industries such as new energy vehicles and new display devices, and the demand for industrial robots in these emerging industries is also expanding. The heterogeneous trend of market demand also promotes the differentiated development of industrial robot products, providing more development space for enterprises.
Favorable policies are frequent
The take-off of China's industrial robot industry has also benefited from a series of favorable policies issued by the national and local governments. In recent years, a series of blockbuster policies such as "Made in China 2025" and "New Generation Artificial Intelligence Development Plan" have been introduced at the national level, pointing out the direction for the development of the industrial robot industry. Local governments have also introduced relevant policies to encourage the development of industrial robot industry clusters. In 2021, the State Council issued the "Robot +" Action Plan (2021-2025), which clearly put forward the development goal of reaching 2 million units of industrial robots in mainland China by 2025, injecting new impetus into the development of the industry.
The breakthrough of localization has achieved initial results
With the strong support of policies, the localization process of China's industrial robot industry is breaking through. For a long time, the core components of industrial robots have been monopolized by foreign companies, which has also become a "neck" problem restricting the development of the mainland industrial robot industry. In recent years, a number of domestic enterprises have made breakthroughs in the field of key components and achieved independent control. Taking the reducer as an example, Chinese enterprises have mastered the core technologies such as planetary gear reducer and harmonic reducer, breaking the monopoly of foreign enterprises.
Driven by the localization of core components, the strength of the whole machine enterprise is also increasing. Some leading enterprises have entered the international high-end market, and their products are exported to overseas. The share of domestic brands in the domestic market is also rising. According to statistics, in 2022, the share of Chinese local brands in the domestic industrial robot market has exceeded 60%.
Challenges and development paths
Despite the great progress, the development of China's industrial robot industry has not been smooth. At present, there are still some shortcomings in the high-end field of the mainland industrial robot industry, such as high-precision servo systems, high-performance control systems and other key technologies to be broken through. Increasing investment in basic R&D and making up for technical shortcomings is a top priority for future development.
Cultivating an innovation ecosystem and promoting industrial upgrading are also top priorities. Only by continuously strengthening the collaborative innovation of production, education, research and application can we continue to enhance the innovation vitality of the industry. Exploring emerging application scenarios and tapping incremental markets will also bring new development opportunities to the industrial robot industry.
Throughout the development process of China's industrial robot industry, we can see that this is a process from catching up to running, and then to leading. In this process, domestic enterprises continue to break through technical bottlenecks and achieve independent innovation; Government departments have also introduced a series of favorable policies to create a good environment for industrial development. Today, China's industrial robot industry has accumulated strong strength and is working hard to build the foundation of new industrialization. It is believed that in the near future, China's industrial robots will be able to show more powerful strength on the international stage.