To further strengthen innovation-driven development and achieve the transformation from a 'major manufacturing country' to a 'manufacturing power', China has begun vigorously implementing the 'Made in China 2025' plan, promoting automation and informatization upgrades centered on the development of intelligent manufacturing. Among these, industrial robots, as a major industry in the field of intelligent manufacturing, have always been a key focus of national attention.

China's industrial robot industry is accelerating its development

In recent years, under the dual positive influences of policy and market, the scale of China's industrial robot market has continuously grown, with production expanding in tandem, showing a positive upward trend. According to data released by the National Bureau of Statistics, China's industrial robot output reached 130,000 units in 2017, a year-on-year increase of as high as 81%.

 From the perspective of industrial robot stock, China currently ranks first globally, surpassing a number of developed countries such as the United States, Japan, Germany, France, and the United Kingdom. Industry insiders predict that based on the overall development trend of industrial robots, over 34% of industrial robots will enter the Chinese market   in 2018. 

   In 2013, the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology issued the \"Guiding Opinions on Promoting the Development of the Industrial Robot Industry\" with the aim of achieving rapid development of the robot industry. Therefore, the surge in China's industrial robot output and stock is closely related to the government's increased support and the release of policy dividends. At the same time, continuous increases in R&D investment by domestic related enterprises and foreign enterprises' competing capital layout are also important factors driving the rapid development of China's industrial robot market.

  Currently, the application fields of industrial robots in our country are becoming increasingly extensive. They have expanded from more mature industries such as automobiles and electronics to more manufacturing sectors including healthcare, food processing, construction, and environmental protection. In the future, they are expected to maintain a stable expansion trend, continuously broadening their application scope and further driving the growth of the market size.

Core Components Remain the Primary Challenge for Robotics

Chinese robot manufacturers such as Siasun and Efort have made significant progress in the industrial robot sector, gradually breaking the dominance traditionally held by advanced robotics economies including Japan, Europe and the United States. However, despite the robust growth of China’s robot market and the continuous development of domestic robot enterprises, this does not mean that China has achieved full competitive success in the industrial robot industry.

In fact, China still lags far behind foreign giants in core technologies and key components of industrial robots. Gaps also remain in industrial chain development and market share in the mid-to-high-end segments.

Regarding core components, Chinese industrial robot manufacturers have long relied on imports from overseas suppliers. For instance, various reducers are mostly purchased from Japan, while machine vision systems and grippers are mainly imported from Germany. To avoid being trapped in low-end positioning within high-end industries, break foreign technological monopolies, and truly achieve the rise of China’s industrial robot industry, sustained breakthroughs must be made in core components.

Admittedly, overcoming the bottleneck of core components is no easy task and requires joint efforts from the government, the industry and enterprises. Only by giving full play to the advantages of all parties and fully mobilizing existing resources can new progress be achieved in core technologies, develop high-quality core components with independent intellectual property rights, and secure control over China’s vast industrial robot market.

Chinese-made RA reducers have achieved a breakthrough. Modern industrial robots are becoming increasingly flexible and agile, capable of stably and accurately performing numerous practical tasks while ensuring process quality—all of which rely on control systems such as reducers. In simple terms, reducers are akin to the joints of industrial robots. Only with high-quality reducer products can industrial robots fully realize their potential.

For a long time, China's industrial robots primarily imported RV reducers from Japan, which greatly constrained the development of domestic robot enterprises and the localization of robot manufacturing. This was highly unfavorable for the sustainable development of domestic robots and significantly impacted domestic robot companies' efforts to seize development leadership and enhance market competitiveness.

It is known that RV reducers, composed of cycloidal needle wheels and planetary frames, offer numerous advantages such as compact size, strong impact resistance, high torque, high positioning accuracy, low vibration, and large reduction ratio. They have been widely applied in fields including industrial robots, machine tools, medical testing equipment, and satellite reception systems.

Recently, after years of effort, the 707th Institute of China Shipbuilding Industry Corporation successfully developed an RV reducer independently. This reducer can be applied to industrial robots used in welding and spraying, as well as wind power equipment, and is expected to achieve large-scale commercialization within the year. This breakthrough in the RV reducer field will provide strong support for the complete localization of China's industrial robots.

In the future, as domestic reducers mature in both technology and the market, they will leverage their cost-performance advantages to first enter the mid-to-low-end industrial robot market and then make inroads into the high-end industrial robot market. By 2020, the domestic reducer market size is expected to exceed 6.6 billion yuan, presenting great opportunities for domestic reducers.