How long will it take for robots to replace humans?

by The Associated Press when people are still arguing about whether robots can replace people.

As industrial robots are being accepted and popularized by more and more factories, the question is, will one day be completely replaced by robots?

The powerful "species" has been serving the Associated Press for more than half a year, when people are still arguing about whether robots can replace people.

Since last summer, the Associated Press has been working with automatedinsights to write earnings articles using the company's Wordsmith platform, according to media reports. A few days ago, an unnamed article titled Apple's Break on Wall Street's first-quarter expectation (appletopsstreet1qforecasts) was written and published by Robots.

Jameskotecki, Automatedinsights's PR manager, said Wordsmith wrote millions of news reports a week, and its partners included good deeds (Allstate), Comcast (Comcast), and Yahoo.

In China's production workshop, there have been more large-scale robots to replace human attempts. On January 30, Wang Shi told the media at a forum in London Business School that China has entered an aging society and that robots will be able to access community services much faster than people think.

This raises an interesting but particularly serious topic: how far is China from the Smart Factory, which is among the world's largest robotics markets? Will the wave of globalisation of China's industrial robotics market drive people out of factories?

Here comes the robot.

Around 2010, China's robotic market began to start. Three years later, the country, which is 30 years slower than neighboring Japan, has leapt into the world's largest robotic market. 2013, China sold 37,000 industrial robots, an increase of 60%, and China has been built and under construction of the robot industry park has reached more than 30.

"In China's Internet of things, industrial 4.0 and other emerging industries, the huge demand, the future of the robot to Miniaturization, multi-sensor, Mobile, artificial intelligence, communication direction, the market also ushered in the history of the most powerful growth opportunities." Recently, one of the middle-class foreign robot companies said to the first financial daily.

This reporter learned that at present, Guangzhou, Shenzhen, Foshan, Dongguan, Huizhou and other Pearl River Delta has initially formed from the development and production to industrial applications industrial robot industrial chain. Recently, the "2014 Shenzhen White Paper on robot industry" for the draft has been published, this is the first published local robot industry white paper, the content shows that the 2013 Shenzhen robot, wearable equipment and intelligent equipment industry added value of about 20 billion yuan, is expected after seven years of development, By 2020 the value of the industry will exceed 200 billion yuan.

The benefits of using robots are not unknown to business owners, but in the past it is not a good idea for companies to replace workers with robots because there is still a lot of cheap labor available.

Now, the situation is different: rising labor costs, labor shortages, has become more and more enterprises "long-standing" problem.

"Now basically to people do not want to do the stage, many factory workers are very young, the working conditions are relatively high, less willing to do the handling, air conditioner shell spray, such as the burden of work, these posts may need to use a large number of low-end industrial robots." "A few days ago, hit the robot institute to this reporter said."

such as 31 heavy industry, such as engineering machinery Enterprises, as early as 2007, there are "intelligent manipulator" of the welding robot appeared production line, after 2012, is located in Shanghai, 31 excavator production base, welding robot is a large-scale put into use. Foxconn has also been pushing for "automation applications" in recent years, and even before 2011, Foxconn chairman Terry Gou has announced plans to use 1 million robots to improve Foxconn's production lines within three years.

In addition to these powerful large enterprises, some small and medium-sized enterprises are also trying to replace people with robots.

"If from the humanization angle, the robot can replace person to do heavy or dangerous work, and can do 24 hours of continuous standardization operation, production supervisor is willing to introduce the robot, but also need to take into account the cost, that is, recovery period." "February 2, the head of a robotics application company, said in an interview with our correspondent.

He calculated that workers pay 3000 to 4000 yuan per month, a robot can generally replace the workload of 5~10 workers, the service life of 2-5 years, a about 300,000 of the domestic robot complete solution is able to recover human costs in 2 years. "The price of a robot is not the same as the payback period, the enterprise can introduce the robot, need to choose according to cost and efficiency." ”

The person also said that the robot's input is a comprehensive measurement, rather than a simple indicator, the general use of benign data to reflect the production workshop standards. "The cost of introducing a robot is high, and if the price is too high, many small and medium-sized enterprises may not be able to do a lot of applications, but in the long run, robots are still better than labor." ”

Compared to the simple introduction of robots, said the enterprise in the middle of the reporter, the application end of the enterprise should be introduced is the pipeline, that is, for the production of specific products, equipment integration line, "if the introduction of production lines, new production line with robot integration, for business investment, that is incidentally, so, The core issue of the enterprise is to assess whether to invest in this production line, not the robot itself. "he said.

According to him, like Comau (Comau) The company itself is to do the robot, but the company's auto manufacturing line integration is the core business, selling robots is a sideline, "krones filling line may be hundreds of billions of robots, several robot integration is very easy, the cost is not high."

But the person also said that the cost of integration can be far greater than the cost of the robot itself, or even several times the cost, and "can develop as you want to the integration system is not known, only to complete simple functions is easy, but, if not stable, it may be better than back to the manual era."

Collaboration between man and robot

As industrial robots are being accepted and popularized by more and more factories, the question is, will one day be completely replaced by robots?

This interesting topic has also become the focus of the 2015 China Servo and motion control and Industrial Robotics Entrepreneur Summit Forum. On this forum, Xichuang, director of Yaskawa Motor (China) Co., said that robots are good at things that are different from what people are good at. "Robots are not simply substitutes for human beings, but they need to be liberated from simple repetitive labor and high risk, pollution and high-intensity labor." ”

Data show that the Yaskawa motor and the Swiss ABB, Japan hair that branch company, Germany Treasury card robot and called the "four families" in the field of robotics, these giants occupy the Chinese robot industry more than 70% of the market share, and almost monopolized the robot manufacturing, welding and other high-end areas.

The middle class of these enterprises also believes that industrial robots can replace people in many ways, but they cannot completely replace people. The most traditional market for industrial robots is the automotive manufacturing industry, electronics manufacturing (consumer electronics such as Apple, Samsung Mobile), and rubber manufacturing, where the demand for robotic applications is greater, he explains.

In his view, the basic needs of the robot is to meet the production efficiency of the problem, with the quality and speed, and others with safety, labor intensity has a relationship. "To a car seat welding, there are several key points is the robot to achieve the best, such as processing quality consistency problem, processing speed problems, to make production more flexible, etc., and some toxic and harmful gas occasions are not suitable for people to work, is the need for robots to participate." ”

However, even if the use of robots, can not be separated from the operation, maintenance, maintenance, according to the Chinese robot network is not complete statistics, a robotic person needs 3 to 5 related operation and maintenance and integrated application personnel. "Robots do not change the nature of production process, nor can we change the nature of production-to provide consumers with high-quality, inexpensive products, robots just for the production of convenience, we do not bring the cart before the horse." said the middle enterprise.

The more pressing reality is that, compared to the US, Europe, Japan and South Korea, China still faces the embarrassment of "buying robots cannot be used", and how to transform existing old equipment is more realistic.

"Transformation, application software is the core issue, and then integration capabilities." "In the middle of the enterprise, the robot assembly line problem is not the robot itself, but in the development of the application software for robot production, this software not only includes the robot, but the collaboration between robot and robot, Robot and CNC collaboration, Robot and positioning system collaboration, robot and process equipment," These machines come from different enterprises, now to collaborate, whether the hardware interface can interconnect, whether the software interface can be integrated is a problem.

However, given China's current technology level, such lines are largely dependent on imports – and imported equipment is extremely expensive, and only large companies can invest.

"European and American enterprises have experienced a century of management accumulation, today's cims, ERP is only their management data, but did not change their management nature-' lean production ' and ' agile manufacturing ', cims is ' operation ', based on the lean production of the ' Tao ' on the basis of implementation. "The middle of the enterprise said, even those in the industry's largest and most famous enterprises, may be with the European and American factories will have more than 20 years of gap."