China’s robotic industry has grown at an annual rate of 30 percent for the past five years to USD seven billion in 2017, said Miao Wei, minister of industry and information technology at this year’s World Robot Conference (WRC) being held in Beijing.
During this 5-day WRC, robotic companies from across the world have been displaying their latest products.
Education is one of the hot topics at this event, with many exhibitors targeting their efforts at application scenarios like school and family. The UBTECH Robotics Corp., a company financed by China’s internet giant Tencent, is one example, which highlighted its STEM robot that covered science, technology, engineering and math.
In 2017, service robots like this STEM model generated a mild USD 1.28 billion in sales revenue domestically. Great market potential lies ahead for such robots as China sees an ageing population and rising demand for healthcare and education services.
Industrial robots also represent one of the most popular types, which currently make up a quarter of China’s robotics industry as a whole. In 2017, they enjoyed impressive expansion at home, with over 130 thousand units produced, up by 68.1 percent year-on-year. The robust performance in 2017 ensured China’s status as the world’s top player in robotics application for the fifth consecutive year.
This momentum continued into 2018. For the first seven months, China’s industrial robots registered a 21 percent production growth, according to a press release from the National Development and Reform Commission on Thursday.
Aside from its rapid growth, China’s robotic industry still faces many challenges, pointed out Miao at the WRC, saying that China still needs to make more breakthroughs in core technologies, explore more fields of application, and improve the related laws and regulations.
China will stick to the concept of open development, and form an open and global community of interest in the field of robots, he added.
Globally, the robotic industry has enjoyed a number of boom years. Data from the International Federation of Robotics showed the size of this industry exceeded USD 25 billion in 2017 and was on track to reach USD 30 billion in 2018.
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