According to the Voice of Economics, “Tianxia Company”, there are currently several hundred companies in China.robotfactory. In the small and scattered competition pattern, the second-ranked manufacturer has an annual sales of less than 100 million yuan, only Shenyang Xinsong Robot Co., Ltd. has an annual sales income of 1.6 billion yuan. What are the technical advantages of this largest robot factory in China? What is the production workshop like? The Voice of Economics reporter Lv Hongqiao came here recently and made a visit.
A unique press conference was staged in Shenyang, hosted by a robot.This is Xinsong RobotautomationAlthough a service robot developed by Co., Ltd. is already an old model, it seems that there is nothing wrong with the guest host.
The robot host isn’t quite the protagonist. Entering the factory floor, a white robot with a screen on its head spoke to reporters.
Robot: First meeting, please take care. What kind of business do you need?
This is the robot lobby manager. It is mainly used in banks. It is not only for ushering and sending, standing and posing. Ha Enjing, director of the brand and public relations department of Xinsong Robot, said that it can basically do the work that a human lobby manager can do.
Hahnjing: It can be introduced, you can swipe a small ticket, you can swipe your face, because its technology is becoming more and more advanced, it can be recognized, and it can be used for human-computer interaction. You can see that you can move something in the middle of it and take guests to the designated window, just like the lobby manager. It can automatically avoid it, and when you see people there, it will walk around people.
Beside the robot lobby manager, several Robots carrying trays and mineral water shuttled back and forth between the tables. Their identities are robot waiters, also known as food delivery robots. But in fact, they can not only order and deliver food, but some can also complete technical tasks such as bartending. In some cities, robot waiters are already on duty.
Ha Enjing: This food delivery service is relatively mature now, and you often see robot restaurants, so it is quite convenient. In the future, it may be combined with Alipay and other ports, it may be able to check out, and guests can use it to pay for dinner.
In addition, SIASUN is also developing new service robots for use in the fields of medical care and retirement rehabilitation. Of course, these are still kept secret.However, the company’s bestindustryrobot.
In a certain area of Xinsong workshop, dozens ofmechanicalThe arms are constantly waving, the scene is quite spectacular, and even has the posture of a science fiction movie. In fact, this is a test of an Industrial robot. There is a fast sorting robot, which can carry two hundred times a minute, which is dazzling; there is a parallel robot, where two manipulators can coordinately assemble parts; there is a grinding robot, which has high precision and is not afraid of dust pollution.
Hahnjing: For example, we have also added many new technologies such as vision and sensing. Our domestic robots are now replacing imports in large quantities, including many robots currently used by the headquarters of General Motors in the United States, which are provided by us.
In a corner of the workshop, the reporter saw a robot that looked a bit like a basketball hoop a few sizes smaller. Unexpectedly, this turned out to be the only compound robot put into use in the world. Its killer feature is that no matter how complicated the workshop environment is, it can carry things around in all directions and assemble parts along the assembly line. Hahnjing said that even the famous German KUKA cannot create such a robot at present.
Hahnjing: Composite robots are mobile operations, and this is also the first of its kind in the world. KUKA also developed this product, but it did not meet the application standards.
According to the National Bureau of Statistics, the output of Industrial robots in my country in 2015 was more than 32,000 units, a year-on-year increase of 21%. According to statistics from the China Robotics Alliance, in 2015, more than 22,000 industrial robots of independent brands were produced and sold, a year-on-year increase of 31%. Wen Yongteng, investment manager of Ether Capital, said:
Wen Yongteng: The endogenous factors of the Robot Industry may have given a big boost in the past two years. The entire robot industry can be divided into two fields: industrial robots and household robots. Let’s talk about industrial robots first. Its development is mainly due to the demand for upgrading China’s manufacturing industry and the pressure of rising labor force in the past two years; household robots are actually a derivative of the development of the internet of Things, from the earliest PCs to smartphones and then to Smart hardware, to robotics. From the perspective of ordinary users, we all hope that these intelligent hardware can be closer to our lives and interact with us better. Home robots are likely to be a smart machine that can better interact with us in the future.
However, in the view of Xin Guobin, Vice Minister of the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology, my country’s robot industry has shown a trend of “low-end high-end industry”, and there are hidden concerns of excess investment. Robot companies should avoid blind expansion and low-level repeated construction. Han Liqun, vice chairman of the National intelligent robot Innovation Alliance, said that many low-end manufacturers are pouring in, trying to get a share of the industry’s development.
Han Liqun: It should have gone to the high-end, but now everyone is rushing up and making the threshold very low. Everyone is doing it, but most of them are repeating at the low-end and low-level. So I think there is a trend of overheating now, and people at the low end are all trying to build high-end industries, and they all want to get a share of the pie.
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Qu Daokui, president of Shenyang SIASUN Robotics Co., Ltd., previously said: “Robots are high-end equipment, but most of the high-end market is now monopolized by foreign products, and self-developed products only account for about 14-5%.motor, drive, high-precision reducer and other core components rely on imports, which account for about 60% to 70% of the cost. The core technology is hollow, and the core components are imported. “
In addition to core technologies, Han Liqun emphasized that the scarcity of professional talents is also a major bottleneck restricting the development of the domestic robot industry.
Han Liqun: One is the key technology, such as core technology and core components, which is far behind the advanced level of foreign countries; the other is the talent, we do not have a special robotics major now, and the robotics are all transferred from other related majors. We now have all the promising industries in China that are not short of money, but there is a huge shortage of talents who master technology.
More attention than the robot itself is the “robot substitution”. You must know that robots are definitely not only cute toys, but also a weapon that can steal your job. Foxconn, for example, has used robotics to halve the number of employees at its Kunshan factory in Jiangsu. Wang Dinggui, deputy manager of Foxconn Electronics Kunshan Co., Ltd., said: This park originally needed 80,000 employees, but now there are only less than half of it.
The person in charge calculated an account. Today, the salary of an ordinary worker is about 50,000 yuan a year, while the market price of an Industrial Robot is about 120,000 yuan. Through transformation, industrial robots can completely replace multiple workers. It can work for 24 hours, with small error and higher yield.
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In addition to Kunshan, Jiangsu, Zhejiang, Guangdong and other economically developed areas in the east and southeast are also increasingly beginning to see robots replacing manpower. Taking Guangdong as an example, in 2015, the number of robots in Guangdong reached 41,000 units, accounting for 18.8% of the country and 2.5% of the world. In other words, Guangdong is becoming a big province of “robot substitution”. Zhang Yukui, director of the sheet metal spraying branch of Gree Electric Appliances in Zhuhai, said that the replacement of robots can not only save manpower, but also make workers’ sense of work dignity soar.
Zhang Yukui: Like our line, 10 people used to operate it, but now only two people are needed to operate it. In the past, it was necessary to sweat profusely, but now you can see that our employees are only checking, and they operate this kind of equipment, so they have a sense of decency, honor and dignity in their work.
Many people worry that after the “robot substitution”, many workers on the assembly line in the past will lose their “jobs”. For example, the owner of a factory producing furniture said: a Robotic arm of 200,000 yuan can replace two skilled workers with an annual salary of 100,000 yuan. In other words, it pays for itself in one year. When seeing the news of Foxconn’s Kunshan factory laying off 60,000 employees, some netizens commented: I feel that the era of unemployment for industrial workers is coming.
Yang Yiyong, director of the Institute of Social Development of the National Development and Reform Commission, believes that the current discussion of “robot substitution” is essentially the same as that of “machine substitution” more than a hundred years ago.
Yang Yiyong: What is the relationship between scientific and technological progress and employment? This question has been discussed repeatedly for 150 years. This question has been around since Chaplin’s modern days. I think from the perspective of the long history and the development history of the past 150 years, the progress of science and technology and the increase of employment are also increasing, so in the long run, there is no need to worry; but in the short term, the near-term worry is relatively large. How to make the transition smoothly? First, we need to create and create new businesses. Second, we may need to control the speed at which robots replace industrial workers. The time gained is to help industrial workers and cultivate the ability of entrepreneurship and innovation to transfer jobs.
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