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Zhongguancun’s robot industry prospers over past five years

chinadaily.com.cn | Updated: Jan 12, 2021 L M S

Nearly 5,500 Geek+ robots were put to work at a 300,000-square-meter smart warehouse during last year's Double 11 shopping spree. 

A total of 13.19 million orders during the shopping carnival were shipped from the warehouse within two days, during which time it was the world's largest robot warehouse operation. The facility's delivery efficiency is double that of regular warehouses.

Geek+, a Zhongguancun enterprise that focuses on smart logistics, grew from start-up to maturity from 2016 to 2020. During this period, China's robot industry experienced rapid development during the 13th Five-Year Plan (2016-20) period.

Since 2016, 302 robot-related companies have launched in Zhongguancun, including six robot manufacturers focused on upstream core parts, 74 midstream robot body manufacturing companies and 222 robot companies devoted to downstream systems. These businesses have formed a robot industry chain that integrates core technology research and development, components, core technical equipment and core industrial software with enterprise production and management.

Robots developed by Geek+ can assist operators in completing product order assembly, which helps operators reduce unnecessary walking in the warehouse and improves operational flexibility. The robots also help increase picking efficiency by two to three times.

Geek+'s full line smart logistics products have been adopted in pilot cities by China Mobile, Suning Logistics and ZTE. In the future, Geek+ will cooperate with China Mobile, China Unicom and China Telecom to build a 5G-based AI robot smart logistics base in Beijing.

In another realm of the robotics industry, the service robots produced by Zhongguancun-based company Orion Star are changing our lives.

Orion Star, founded in 2016, specializes in producing robots used in daily life. Its star products, such as the intelligent voice service robots, smart delivery service robots and intelligent labor service robots, serve in more than 20 industry scenarios such as scenic spots, large shopping malls, schools, exhibitions, museums, medical institutions, hotels and KTVs. 

By the end of September 2020, there were more than 15,000 Orion Star intelligent service robots nationwide, with an average daily voice interaction frequency of 7.8 million. The total number of people served has exceeded 200 million.

The controller, reducer and servo motor are the three core components of robots. As the "brain" of robots, the controller directly determines a robot's function, performance and added value. 

Domestic light industrial robot company Rokae started by developing a control system, which has taken the lead domestically in terms of stability, reliability, trajectory accuracy and repeat control accuracy.

Recently, at the 2020 China Robot Industry Annual Conference held in Nanjing, Jiangsu, Liu Wuyue, CEO of Zhongguancun-based enterprise Beijing Link-Touch, gave a roadshow report titled the "Application and Practice of Robot Six-Dimensional Force Sensors." The presentation triggered extensive discussions.

Generally speaking, robots have no sense of touch. That being said, with multidimensional force sensors, robots can have the ability to "feel" things.

Six-dimensional force sensors are mostly used in medical-surgical robots and precision assembly robots, which require higher accuracy. 

The performance level of the six-dimensional force sensor products developed by Beijing Link-Touch and Beijing Kunwei have reached or exceeded similar foreign products, with higher cost performance.

The high-precision RV reducer used in robot joints is a crucial component that accounts for about 40 percent of a robot's cost. 

Japanese companies have long dominated the market for such products. However, during the 13th Five-Year Plan (2016-20) period, Beijing Chietom Precision Transmission Technology Co made a significant breakthrough in this field.

"The high-end reducers we produce have the same accuracy as those produced by Japanese companies," said Zhang Yueming, chief scientist of Beijing Chietom. Zhang added that Chietom's RV reducer products have officially entered the Japanese, European and American markets.

As the "eyes" of robots, lidar is the core component of a robot's environment perception system.

Established in 2015, Zhongguancun company Benewake focuses on the R&D and manufacturing of solid-state lidar units. The company's independently developed Benewake-Horn-X Long Range 3D Lidar and other lidar products have performance data that exceed similar foreign companies.

Lidar helps solve the two-dimensional-plane problems in the vision system, making a robot's environmental perception three-dimensional, complex and changeable.

The new high-precision 3D vision system can get a good look at reflective black objects, and the system's price is only one-third of similar solutions.

In the field of upstream core components for robots, Zhongguancun has formed a new force: the control system of Rokae; the sensors of Mech-Mind, Benewake, Kunwei, Link-Touch and others; the servo system of HollySys, Tsind Dynatron and others; and reducers from Zhongji Kemei, Beijing Harmonic and Chietom, among other companies.

The most basic and core component of a robot is its dexterous robotic hand, which can have a price as high as 100,000 yuan ($ 15440). This high price-point has hindered the development of many domestic robot companies. To address this, the government set up a special project to support the development of low-cost dexterous hands.

Inspire-Robots participated in the project as a core member and became a pioneer in producing domestically-made commercial-grade dexterous robotic hands. The company successfully developed the first commercial-grade five-finger dexterous hand in China, which significantly reduced the cost of good robotic hands.

"Looking at the development and evolution of robots, the overall trend is moving toward human-like arms," said Song Bin, managing partner of Rokae. Song believes that by using AI and other technologies, collaborative robots may eventually achieve accurate simulation of human arms, which can be used in non-industrial scenarios such as auxiliary medical care.

In terms of robot body parts production, especially robot arms, Zhongguancun's enterprises have formed a series of critical technologies with independent intellectual property rights. These companies have also achieved technological breakthroughs and demonstrative achievements with international competitive advantages.

Among them, AUBO Robotics has strong technical abilities and has developed an i5 robot with a repeat positioning accuracy of 0.026 millimeters. The robot's performance is comparable to the same type of international industrial robots and is superior to the same kind of international collaborative robots.

The offline programming software for industrial robots supports the high-end applications of industrial robots. The PQArt offline programming software for industrial robots independently developed by Huahang Weishi reduces costs by two-thirds.

During the 13th Five-Year Plan (2016-20) period, Zhongguancun-produced robots have made significant progress in midstream body manufacturing. 

Companies specializing in industrial robots include Aobo Robotics, Rokae, Beijing Soft Robot Tech, Inspire-Robots and Huahang Weish. Enterprises producing service robots include Orion Star and CANBOT, UBTECH, Yunji Technology and CloudMinds. The firms manufacturing special robots are Topsky Intelligent, Harbin Institute of Technology Robot Group, JingpinTezhuang and Robosea. The companies responsible for smart logistics robots are Geek+ and JD Digital Technology.

Zhongguancun Haidian Park, Yizhuang Park and Shunyi Park have become the most concentrated areas for robotics companies. 

In addition to a large number of universities and scientific research institutes, there are six open laboratories in Zhongguancun and a large number of experts and scholars based there. The facilities and professionals have contributed to the area’s strong R&D and innovation capabilities in human-machine interaction, intelligent control, bionic robots and other fields.