Robot in China

"The construction of these artificial intelligence, the intelligent embedding machine that was previously stored in the human brain, is an important moment in the history of mankind," said French historian Aron, describing the age of robotics. ”

China is striding into this moment. The latest estimate of the "trillion market" in 2014 is an estimate of the industrial system of intelligent manufacturing equipment represented by the robotics industry, can refer to attributes from the International Federation of Robotics Statistics: 2013 China market sales of industrial robots nearly 37,000 units, accounting for about one-fifth of global sales, total sales over Japan, as the world's largest industrial robot market. By 2020, the system's sales revenue will reach 3 trillion yuan.

I thought the robot industry investigation was very boring. The result is not. Our reporter traveled to the Yangtze River Delta robot international giant production base, visited the Pearl River Delta's young robot community, in-depth interview with the only listed in the domestic siasun such a veteran domestic robot research and development, production leading enterprises, in the interview process found more is the deep thought of vibration and appeal. Everything is so strange and interesting.

Industrial robots were first used in the automotive industry, the industry is still the largest number of robots in the field

This is not a report that is full of figures and graphs. The stories of different robotics companies are different, and their feedback on the same environment, data and markets is also blossoming. What are the conditions for the birth and survival of these new robots? Robots are such a comprehensive industry that interviewing the findings of the survey is more like making a typical profile of Chinese manufacturing.

The pace of technological innovation in catching up with developed countries began at the world factory. According to the Economist's study of the industrialization process in the industrialized countries, the country usually goes into the late stage of industrialization when the GDP per capita exceeds 5000 dollars. In 2011, China's GDP per capita was over $5000 trillion, reaching $5444 trillion, and 2012 reaching $6180 trillion. From 2002 to 2012, China's per capita GDP growth rate remained above 10%, with a median growth rate of 17%. The reality of this growth is that the previous phase of the rapid development of the economy to the excessive consumption of resources, investment has been difficult to drive the healthy growth of the economy, the labor force growth is constrained.

As a result, the first feature that has come into the late stages of industrialization is that the more important impetus for economic growth is no longer investment and energy, and economists call innovation, technology and efficiency improvements a complete element. The development of industrialized countries proves that in the late stage of industrialization, the contribution of whole factor to economic increase is trend rising, it is necessary to change the impetus of economic growth, to improve efficiency and to encourage technological innovation. After 30 years of reform and opening-up, China's manufacturing industry has already possessed the advantages of scale and technology, and its industrial capital is abundant, which has emerged as an international competitive profession such as communication industry and material Union. In the previous energy-type economic society, computers, CNC machine tools, microelectronics software and other fields, the beginning of this period of China's low but rapid growth of the sector, and these technologies are the development of robotics must rely on the key foundation.

Therefore, it is very special for China to enter the time node of the robot demand acceleration critical point. The reality is that the time for China to start robotics research is not too late, but the pace is lagging behind. China, the world's factory, is now in the "sandwich" era. The rapid rise of factors such as land and labor force makes Chinese manufacturing industry face double pressure from developed countries and developing countries. On the one hand, Western developed countries such as Europe and the United States from the technology, trade and other aspects of repression of China's manufacturing industry, on the other hand, India, Vietnam, Mexico and other developing countries, such as labor and other low-cost advantages, become the new position of international industrial transfer. and industrial robots from the beginning of birth, is designed to improve the efficiency of manufacturing, improve product quality, thus reducing the overall cost. In this context, the development and application of China's robotics industry will lead the economic transformation to continue to upgrade.

Late in demand, investment has been pouring in from this year onwards. A person in the industry told me that he alone handled the first half of the hot money in the field of robotics has more than 1 billion yuan. The scale of the wave is still expanding. The global industrial robot market is mainly in China, Europe, America, Japan and Korea. Japan, the United States, Germany, South Korea, China's stock accounted for the global proportion of 71.24%, sales reached 69.92%. From the view of the use density of robots, the density of industrial robots in China is still far below the global average, and there is a big gap between Japan, Korea, Germany and other developed countries. South Korea is the world's highest-density industrial robot, with 347 robots per 10,000 workers, Japan second, 339, Germany third, 251, and China only 21, less than half the international average of 55.

Interestingly, the industry is not moving for hot money, still growing steadily at the same pace as before. "The robot industry is not an investment-driven, but a real demand in China." "I was told by an analyst with the Securities tracking robotics industry. After the 2009 global economic recession, the 2010 global industrial robot industry experienced a recovery, 2011 Global Industrial robot industry sales have exceeded 160,000 units, the 2012 growth slightly decreased, 2013 global robot sales of 179,000 units, an increase of 12%. According to IFR statistics, 2014 years ago 4 months of the rapid growth of robot orders, it is expected this year's sales growth will remain at a higher level. The total number of industrial robots sold in China is more than 27,000, up 20% from the previous year. Domestic robot Enterprise statistics, 2013 domestic enterprises in China sales of industrial robots in the total of more than 9600 units, compared to 2012 year-on-year growth of 3 times times. Robots have been used in foreign countries for decades to experience the ups and downs of the industrialization process, in today's China is accelerating in a special way to promote.

The definition of a robot as a tool of production is outdated. In the United States and Japan, the robotics industry has been developing for decades, and there have been several big ups and downs. A group of traditional robotics companies collapsed after the transfer of the auto industry, leaving only a few world-class giants. We interviewed ABB, Kuka and other giant companies, as early as more than 10 years ago has entered China, and in the manufacturing market occupies an absolute advantage. From Morgan Stanley's data, Chinese robots are still in the early stages of application, especially in the auto industry. Since 2007-2011, nearly half of China's industrial robots have contributed to the automotive industry. China appears to be replicating Germany and North America in the auto industry, which accounts for 59% of Chinese robot demand and 17% of the electronics industry. After decades of development and shrinkage in the automotive industry, the application of robotics has reached the top of the world, and in South Korea, robots are also more widely used than China.

But it's not that simple. As economist Freeman says: "Technological innovation is not an isolated phenomenon, but on the contrary, technological innovation is the key factor in explaining the economic cycle and is usually the driving force for economic growth." "A major feature of the diffusion of new technology economic models is that it extends from the initial industry or application area to a much broader range of industries, services and the economy as a whole." In China our investigation is based on this idea and it turns out that this is more fun than looking for a lunar rover.

"(robots) shaped by human beliefs, desires, and aspirations ... Our institutions, including our habits, values, organizations, and customs of thought, are powerful forces that shape our robots in unique ways. "There is no technology that exists independently, around the robot, as the host's organization and network, in designing it, making it, diffusing it, pushing it and standardizing it." If we are to understand the fate of the robotics industry, we must understand the internal and external dynamics of these systems.

This holistic form of internal inspection, advocating technology and society woven into a "seamless network." The robot industry is analogous to the automotive industry as a comprehensive drive to promote the overall national economy of the special industry, and even open up more than the Apple mobile phone also a wide range of applications. In the interview, we get the opposite view from the exact same data. The more pessimistic view is that China is only a robot to buy and use large countries, the vast majority of the market and technology is occupied by robot giant companies, but also experts believe that Chinese robots in the "high-speed rail" mode, to cooperate instead of buying, first become a large-scale manufacturing countries. Either way, China has reached the point at which robotic demand accelerates, a window that can catch up with the developed world, opening for 8 to 10 years. This is the domestic robot industry's biggest consensus.

The United States and Japan are trying to regain the priority that manufacturing has lost, which is the backdrop for the emergence of the robotic industry since the new century. In 2014, MIT economist Eric Brinjolsson Erik Brynjolfsson and Andrew Makefi Andrew McAfee studied the rapid transformation. "The recent robots have a profound economic impact on the speed and scope of substitution of human skills," they wrote in the manual machine. "In their view, the emergence of low-cost automation technology heralds a huge change comparable to that of the last century's agricultural revolution, which led to the proportion of U.S. agricultural employment in the total workforce, which has fallen from 40% to 2% today." Makefi that this change can be likened not only to the industrialization of agriculture, but also to the electrification of manufacturing in the last century.

The big slogan "Bring manufacturing back to America" is on the California road deck. On the one hand, the robot technology innovation accelerates, the application domain unceasingly expands, the automation and the intelligence level significantly enhances; On the other hand, robots have become an important counterweight to the manufacturing advantage of developed industrialized countries. By developing artificial intelligence, industrial robots and digital manufacturing, the United States raised labor productivity and returned to manufacturing. As a powerful robot, in order to cope with the shrinking of manufacturing industry, Japan proposes to accelerate the development of the international competitiveness of the manufacturing industry by accelerating cooperative robots and unmanned chemical plants. The economic growth strategy, which was compiled by the government in June this year, puts forward guidelines for the "robot-led Industrial revolution" and puts forward that it should be fully utilized as a labor force in agriculture and construction. In March 2013, the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy released the white paper "from the Internet to robotics-the American Robot Roadmap (2013)", which read: "What we see is that China will also use robotics, and before that happens, we have a chance to bring manufacturing back to the US." ”

And the real premise is this: things like this have happened.

(Responsible editor: Mengyishan)