The robot industry countries retreat into foreign countries and occupy more than 70% of foreign companies

China has now become the world's largest robot market, but the level of R&D and manufacturing of local robots is still at a disadvantage in international competition. Among them, the key technologies of the core components can not be attacked for a long time, which seriously blocks the healthy development of China's robot industry and aggravates the risk of the industry's “national retreat”.

Statistics from the International Federation of Robotics show that in 2013, foreign-funded enterprises sold more than 27,000 industrial robots in China, an increase of 20% over the previous year and occupy more than 70% of the Chinese market.

Core component short board

The reducer, controller and servo motor are called the three core components of the robot. These three core components, together with the body, can be a complete industrial robot. Although there are many local robot companies in China, the core components of RV reducers, harmonic reducers, servo motors and drives, controllers and other industrial robots still have considerable gaps with foreign brands. Many companies rely on imports.

For example, most of the reducers required for Chinese companies to manufacture industrial robots are purchased from Japanese reducer manufacturers, representative of Nabtesco and Hamerreco in Japan, and the two reducers are in the market. Absolute dominance. Servo motors are the most high-end brands in Europe and America, and Yaskawa is the world's largest supplier of servo motors.

According to industry insiders, the core component is so important because it is closely related to the performance of the robot. Taking the most critical reducer in the core components as an example, the precision reducer allows the robot servo motor to operate at a suitable speed, and accurately reduces the speed to the speed required by various parts of the industrial robot, and increases the rigidity of the mechanical body while outputting. Larger torque, so the robot joint reducer requires short drive chain, small size, high power, light weight and easy control.

Compared with foreign products, there are still many gaps in domestic core components. Cai Hezhen, an academician of the Chinese Academy of Engineering and a professor of mechanical and electrical control and automation at Harbin Institute of Technology, said that the life, performance and noise control of China's core components, especially the reducer, will not work. "For example, the movement of the arm is very complicated, there are both fast and slow, and there are both positive and negative. Our reducer can't meet the requirements, reliability and quality are not good. Our reducer is noisy and people are very quiet."

Li Ruifeng, deputy director of the Institute of Robotics at Harbin Institute of Technology, said that foreign robots have undergone extensive verification, and the stability, longevity and accuracy of domestic robots often fall short of expectations. Robots require high-performance dynamic processes, and performance can only be tested in constant testing. Static is difficult to measure.

"Everyone has undergone a lot of verification. You have just produced this, can you guarantee that it will not be bad for a few years? So it must have word of mouth support, and wait for demonstration use." Li Ruifeng said.

This is particularly evident in the experience of Dongguan Yingdong High-Tech Automation Co., Ltd. The company was founded by the National “Thousand Talents Program” expert, Zhuang Dejin, Ph.D. in Materials Science, University of Kansas State University, and its team. The company has successfully applied for 6 patents in several years in Songshan Lake, Dongguan, Guangdong Province, 3 of which are inventions. patent.

After many years of hard work, Zhuang Dejin and his team have developed a world-leading absolute encoder, which is a basic core component closely related to servo motors, breaking the monopoly of foreign industry giants in this field. It has been recognized by industry authorities including Germany, and the sales price is only one-tenth of that of foreign industry giants.

However, Luo Rihui, the company's deputy general manager, hit the wall when he took the leading products with independent innovation technology to a large manufacturing company in Dongguan.

The main manufacturer of this large-scale manufacturing company bluntly stated that the robot equipment used was worth millions of yuan each, and the core components were all from foreign manufacturers. The encoders produced by Yingdong High-Tech did not undergo long-term stability testing, and it was impossible for enterprises to save coding. The cost of this core component is at risk of damage to the complete set of equipment that may be damaged by the encoder mismatch provided by Yinggao. The business owner suggested that unless the company can produce long-term stable reports, even if the quality of the encoder is good, the price is cheaper, they can not use.

Industrial competitiveness weakened

At present, only a few companies such as Guangzhou CNC, Nanjing Eston, and Shenyang Xinsong Robot are conducting independent research and development of core components such as control systems, drives and servo motors. Many domestic companies only integrate imported robots after purchasing imported parts, lacking core technology. Industry insiders worry that in the long run, the "short core components" will cause the survival space of local enterprises to be squeezed, and the risk of "national retreat into the ocean" will be amplified.

Due to the lack of core component technology, the bargaining space of Chinese enterprises in procurement is narrow, resulting in high cost and weak market competitiveness.

Wu Xinyu, deputy director of the Intelligent Bionics Center of the Shenzhen Institute of Advanced Technology, Chinese Academy of Sciences, and Wu Xinyu, deputy director of the Guangdong Provincial Key Laboratory of Robotics and Intelligent Systems, said that among the cost of industrial robots, the highest cost is the reducer, accounting for about 35%, servo motor About 25%, the controller accounts for about 15%, and the robot body accounts for less than 25% of the total cost. In the absence of core technology, the ontology robotics can control the profit is limited. A robot manufacturer in Nanjing, motors, controllers, and reducers are all imported from Japan, and the cost is too high to make ends meet.

In stark contrast to the heavy dependence on the core components of domestic robotics companies, many international brands of industrial robots are themselves suppliers of core components. For example, Japan FANUC is the world's largest manufacturer of professional CNC systems, and Yaskawa and Panasonic are global. One of the largest motor manufacturers, which gives them a natural advantage in terms of cost. In addition, foreign industrial robot manufacturers have become strategic acquaintances through long-term cooperation with major core component manufacturers, and have been able to obtain more favorable prices due to large purchases.

"The combination of various factors has led to the purchase price of core components by self-owned brand industrial robot manufacturers, which is usually much higher than that of international brand industrial robot manufacturers. The price is not very strong or can only choose independent brands whose performance is difficult to guarantee. Parts," said the industry.

Lack of core technology, local companies are difficult to enter the mainstream market. The "Economic Information Daily" reporter found that compared with foreign products, most of the domestic robots are non-standard products.

"The core components can not be used, production non-standard is only an expedient policy. Although it can adapt to the complex and ever-changing needs of domestic SMEs, but it is difficult to mass production, 10% of the market share, more than 100 companies fiercely compete, it is difficult to produce giants Enterprise." Chen Chaopeng, senior analyst of the Robot Industry Research Institute.

The general manager of a robot manufacturer in Tianjin bluntly said that due to cost considerations, the company retreated to use the domestic reducer, which is difficult to compare with foreign products in terms of accuracy and longevity, which determines that the product can only go in the low-end route.

In addition, the difficulty of self-production of core components also causes post-maintenance to be controlled by people. In 2009, Shanghai Zhenhua Heavy Industry's Dubai Automation Terminal, a foreign brand reducer, experienced large-scale failures. The high cost and low maintenance efficiency made the company very passive. The staff member He Gang said that the speed reducer used by Zhenhua is now produced by itself. The economic account of the single calculation is not as good as the global purchase. However, with the high after-sale cost of the foreign reducer, the production is still cost-effective.

On the application side, this negative effect also appears. More than 30 robots used by China Energy Conservation Solar Technology (Zhenjiang) Co., Ltd. are worth more than 45 million yuan, without exception, foreign brands. Xu Limin, deputy director of the company's equipment management department, said that the robots of these foreign brands have greatly saved labor costs and increased the company's productivity. However, due to the existence of technical barriers, post-maintenance often seeks the support of these vendors, and each time it is charged, which leads to high cost of using robots. However, compared with this maintenance cost concern, he is more worried about the use of domestically produced robot products with unproven stability.

"If the industrial robot is installed on the production line, once it is broken, it means that the entire production line will be affected. This is something we can't bear. So now using foreign brand robots is also helpless," he said.

At the same time that domestic robot companies are under control, foreign robot manufacturers have begun to aggressively attack the city. At present, ABB, KUKA, FANUC, Yaskawa and other international robot leading enterprises have accelerated the pace of setting up or expanding their factories in China. In 2012, KUKA opened its first overseas factory outside of Germany in Shanghai, with an annual production capacity of 5,000 units, accounting for one-third of its global production.

Technical research, bamboo baskets, water

As early as the beginning of the National 863 Program in the mid-1980s, robots were listed as key research areas. Since the "Seventh Five-Year Plan", the robot industry has always been on the list, and it has been listed as a country in the "Twelfth Five-Year Plan". Strategic emerging industries. However, in the past 30 years, the core component technology of robots has still been overcome, but not refined.

In this regard, many people in the industry bluntly understand: "The core components have been engaged in many rounds of technical research, and the money has also been counted. Why did the bamboo baskets hit the water in the end?"

A scientist who participated in the 863 program robot project said that the 863 program has a positive effect in promoting the development of robots, but it has also taken a lot of detours.

He said that the 863 program was initially positioned to track the advanced level of foreign countries, pursue high performance and high indicators, and did not pay much attention to what was needed in the country. Later, the guiding ideology changed, and it was proposed to "track the eggs along the way." The current guiding ideology is to serve the major needs of the country's economic development. Many projects must be enterprise-led and industrialized.

"China started to engage in robotics in the first place. It was only included in the plan in the 1980s, but Japan was industrialized in the 1980s. After 30 years, our industrialization level has not been as high as that of the Japanese first year. We are better than others. It’s slow. Some people say that 2014 is the first year of our robots, and we actually have been slow for at least 30 years,” he said.

In addition to the deviations in the direction of development, the serious disconnect between R&D and application is also an important reason for long-term control of core components. A robot manufacturer bluntly said that for some universities and enterprises, research projects are money tools. “We have worked with a certain university and started to allocate money when the project is started. The actual use of R&D is less than 10%, and the effect can be imagined.”

Wang Jiegao, chief engineer of Nanjing Eston Automation Co., Ltd., believes that the research and development results are “not going to the experimental platform and not entering the market”. For a long time, some major scientific and technological projects have been produced by universities and research institutes. Focus on results identification and awards, not on the market. Published a paper, the teacher rated the title, the student got a degree, the only thing that could not be thought of was how to apply.

“The robot that came out of the institute can be active at first glance, but when it really needs precision welding, it is not allowed to solder joints. Technological innovation is not a sample, but a product, and technology is transformed into a product. One kilometer', we just took a breath in this link." Qian Luzhen, deputy general manager of Kunshan Huaheng Welding Co., Ltd. said.

The core component technology has not been long-term, and it is also related to the weak foundation of the entire national industrial system. Many industry insiders said that the development of robots relies on the overall improvement of the national equipment manufacturing industry, which is a systemic problem. Even the giants in this field can continue to advance on a technology sharing platform.

For example, the accuracy of bearings and gears of gearboxes and servomotors is very high, and domestic materials cannot meet the requirements of robots. The machining accuracy of gears depends on the capabilities of high-end CNC machine tools, and is closely related to the accuracy of CNC machine tools. In the field of CNC machine tools, China is still in the stage of technological catch-up. The gap in processing technology covers the gap between the basic materials and the manufacturing process.

In the future, China's industrial robots have huge demand for core components. The companies and experts surveyed believe that while creating a good market environment and letting robot enterprises develop healthily, the state should also promote the improvement of multi-level research and development systems and accelerate basic research. On the other hand, it is advisable to introduce the robot industry and related technologies as soon as possible. National standards to promote core technology research and development.

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