china robots conference

China is running at the forefront of developing humanoid robotics, and its supply chain demonstrated durable and novel parts during the recent World Robot Conference in Beijing. However, it indicates that Chinese companies are looking for ways to reduce the costs and increase their efficiency, however, reliability problems still remain a serious threat, according to the industry analysts.

Among them is Wisson Technology – a Shenzhen based firm well-known for producing robotic arms. Moreover, the motors and reducers employed in Wisson are unconventional; the company replaces them with 3D printed plastics and pneumatic artificial muscles, which makes production cheaper and easier. As Cao Wei, a partner of Lanchi Ventures who invested in Wisson pointed out such approach lowers the cost of assembling Wisson’s robotic arms to ten percent of that typical industrial robotic arms costing some 10,000 yuan ($1,404). This pricing, Cao says, could explain why Wisson’s technology is especially attractive to manufacturers of humanoid robots. However, Wisson has already shipped sample to some of the overseas manufacturers.

However, cost efficiency initiation is one side of the picture. I will look at some of the current issues plaguing electromechanical product design and manufacturing, which were echoed by Yi Gang, the founder of Ti5 Robot located in Shanghai when discussing with them: Yi said that still because of defects, his firm is only able to manufacture a limited number of products at a time, which affects growth.

The opportunities that China sees in robotics are well-woven into the country’s president Xi Jinping’s agenda of developing “new productive forces” in technology, a concept that dominated the conference. From manufacturing to agriculture, healthcare to home services, China is using these developments to recast the world’s largest industrial robot market. But the reliability challenge will be important to overcome if, indeed, China wants to lead in the robotics sector going forward.