With the iterative advancement of computer control, electronics, materials and other technologies, the performance of industrial robots has reached a high level. However, from the application point of view, industrial robots in the world have not fully penetrated all aspects of all industries, even in developed countries. Therefore, the localization of industrial robots has a long way to go.
As a component of manufacturing industry, industrial robots are closely related to the economic law of the development of manufacturing industry. Therefore, research on industrial robots must first have a clear understanding of its development process and trends.
Industrial robots are important automation equipments for modern manufacturing, integrating mechanical, electronic, control, computer, sensor and artificial intelligence. Since the United States developed the world's first industrial robot in 1962, robotics and its products have developed rapidly, and it has been nearly 50 years old.
With the iterative advancement of computer control, electronics, materials and other technologies, industrial robots have become automated tools for flexible manufacturing systems, automated factories and computer integrated manufacturing systems, and the performance of industrial robots has reached a high level.
Nowadays, the development of industrial robots in a deeper and broader direction and the improvement of the level of robot intelligence have continued to expand, from the automobile manufacturing industry to other manufacturing industries such as electronics and electric appliances, and then to such as mining robots. Various non-manufacturing industries such as construction robots and hydropower system maintenance and repair robots.
At present, the United States is active in robotics innovation. Europe and Japan are major suppliers of industrial robots, and have achieved complete autonomy of core components such as sensors, controllers, and precision reducers. However, from the application point of view, industrial robots in the world have not fully penetrated all aspects of all industries, even in developed countries.
At the same time, the continued growth of the economy and the advancement of urbanization, especially the development of the domestic Internet and mobile Internet, have deeply activated the terminal consumer business ecology, and consumers' requirements for the function, quality, differentiation, diversification and individualization of goods. Increasingly high, this puts higher requirements on the middle part of the commodity manufacturing process, and also puts higher requirements on industrial robots.
With the rise of labor costs and the transformation and upgrading of the economic structure, the transformation and upgrading of China's manufacturing industry is also steadily advancing, and “machine substitution” has become a new phenomenon in manufacturing in recent years. From the perspective of market size, China has been the world's largest market for industrial robots for many years, accounting for 30% of global industrial robot sales, and maintaining rapid growth.
However, the competitiveness of China's industrial robot manufacturing industry is still weak, especially at the core components. However, all of this is quietly changing, and the localization of the Chinese robot industry in the field of core components is accelerating. For example, in the aspect of harmonic reducer, although the input torque, torsion height, transmission accuracy and efficiency of the product are not different from those of Japanese companies, there are already alternative products in China, and the application on industrial robots has already started.
On the whole, China has already broken through the key core technologies of robots as an important strategy. Domestic manufacturers have overcome some of the key problems in the key core components such as reducers and servo motors, and initially realized the localization of controllers and the localization of core components. The trend is gradually emerging. In the future, China's industrial robots will continue to move toward the goal of a strong country.