A wider range of application areas and industry shortcomings to be filled (in-depth reading)
From September 10th to 13th, the 2021 World Robotics Conference was held in Beijing Yichuang International Convention and Exhibition Center.
At the Robot Expo held at the same time, the latest achievements of the scientific and technological circles and the industry have appeared one after another, becoming an important window for observing the cutting-edge technology and industrial development of robots.
The reporter interviewed exhibitors and experts and learned that: In recent years, my country's robotics and industry have developed rapidly, with more and more application scenarios, technological innovations in some fields have been at the forefront, and some key technologies still need to be broken through.
Demand-driven
Robot application scenarios are more diverse
According to the field of robot application, this robot expo set up three exhibition areas: industrial robots, service robots, and special robots. More than 110 companies and scientific research institutions brought more than 500 products to the show, including many products that were exhibited for the first time.
Automobile manufacturing, metal product processing and electronics are traditional application areas of industrial robots.
In recent years, with the maturity of industrial robot technology and technology, the application has gradually extended to the fields of furniture, household appliances, hardware sanitary ware, food and beverage.
Statistics show that my country's industrial robot market has consistently ranked first in the world for eight consecutive years.
Human-machine collaboration is an important trend in industrial robot technology innovation, and surgical robots are a typical application of collaborative robots.
Compared with the previous session, the medical area of this conference has doubled, and some surgical robots that have been unveiled have attracted much attention.
Compared with traditional industrial robots, collaborative robots are smaller, lighter and more flexible. Robots can also show their talents in industries that require precision assembly and product packaging.
"Where is the banana peel?" After hearing the voice command, the bin in the garbage station will automatically open.
In the service robot exhibition area, the artificial intelligence garbage station launched by a company has received a lot of attention.
Based on technologies such as artificial intelligence and the Internet of Things, the garbage station can realize the intelligent classification and management of garbage.
The rapid development of service robots in recent years is mainly due to the development of artificial intelligence. The embedding of speech understanding and visual recognition has made service robots more "smart".
In the field of housekeeping and elderly care, home service robots represented by rehabilitation and companion robots are also developing rapidly.
The demand for special environmental operations has boosted the development of special robots.
Leakage failures of power plant boiler superheaters and reheaters will cause accidental shutdown of units.
In order to avoid this situation, the traditional method is to rely on manual periodic inspection after the furnace is shut down, which is not only inefficient, but also has potential safety hazards.
In the special robot exhibition area, a boiler water wall monitoring robot attracted many visitors.
Xu Guangping, general manager of Beijing Zhongan Jitai Technology Co., Ltd., who developed the robot, introduced that this robot can be put on the water wall of the boiler. Through image recognition and other technologies, it can automatically complete comprehensive inspections such as thickness measurement and flaw detection, and feedback the results to For the rear operator, this is both efficient and safe.
Innovation leads
Presenting a trend towards mid-to-high end
At the opening ceremony of the conference, Xin Guobin, a member of the Party Leadership Group and Deputy Minister of the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology, stated that China's robotics industry will exceed 100 billion yuan in 2020, and China has become the backbone of the world's robotics industry.
Interviewed industry experts told reporters that, on the whole, my country's robotics industry has improved its basic capabilities rapidly in recent years, showing a trend towards mid-to-high end, and it has been at the forefront of the world in some innovations and applications.
"If a fire occurs in a large enclosed factory building, the temperature may rise to 800 to 1000 degrees Celsius in more than 10 minutes. Not to mention people approaching. General fire fighting equipment can only be operated on the periphery." Jin told reporters that in response to this pain point, the company's innovative team based on the Tsinghua University team has developed a high-temperature-resistant fire-fighting robot that can work continuously for 30 minutes in an environment of 1000 degrees Celsius, expanding the scope of fire rescue personnel. .
According to reports, the robot has been applied to the front line of firefighting.
Algae and shellfish adhere to the bottom of the ship, not only corroding the hull, but also affecting navigation.
To clean the bottom of the ship, the traditional high-pressure water gun method will damage the exterior paint.
At the expo, Boya Gongdao Robot Technology Co., Ltd. brought an underwater cleaning robot.
The equipment uses the principle of cavitation jets to clean by means of high-pressure bubbles, which not only does not damage the hull, but also effectively cleans some areas with complex structures.
The staff of the company told reporters that in addition to cleaning the bottom of the ship, the underwater cleaning robot can also be used to clean aquaculture cages and sluice gates. It has a broad application prospect in the future.
In the field of industrial robots, collaborative robots are regarded by many countries as an important direction for future upgrades and development.
According to expert analysis, collaborative robots have only started in recent years and are basically at the same level at home and abroad.
In the field of service robots, my country's robot industry has basically kept pace with the international advanced level in the application of speech recognition, image recognition and other technologies.
In the field of special robots, my country has gradually formed a number of products with core competitiveness in the fields of special drones, underwater robots, and search and rescue robots.
Make up for shortcomings
Need to continue to strengthen basic research
The innovation zone of the expo focused on displaying some of my country's cutting-edge achievements in the fields of robot bodies and key components.
my country has a relatively complete robot industry chain.
In the field of industrial robots, in recent years, domestic manufacturers have overcome some of the problems of key core components such as reducers, control systems, and servo motors. The localization rate of robot products has gradually increased, but there are still shortcomings in key core technologies. The basic research and development such as processing technology is still relatively weak.
Due to the lack of core technology, self-owned brand industrial robots are mainly assembled and processed on behalf of others, and many are in the low-end of the industry.
Qu Daokui, a robotics expert and president of Siasun Robot Automation Co., Ltd., said that my country's robotics industry has solved the problem of existence, but there are still relatively few competitive high-end products.
For example, in the field of industrial robots, domestic robot products are rarely used on high-end manufacturing lines such as automobiles and electronics.
According to expert analysis, my country's technological gap in core components is mainly reflected in the accuracy of processing and assembly, as well as the stability and consistency of products.
In the future, to promote the high-quality development of the robotics industry, efforts should be made to make up for the shortcomings and make efforts in basic research and key core technology research to consolidate the foundation of the industry.
This process cannot be rushed, and requires collaboration between government, industry, university and research to improve the stability and competitiveness of the robot industry chain and supply chain.
Our reporter Yu Sinan