On August 16th, at the 2018 World Robotics Conference held in Beijing, the Chinese Institute of Electronics released the "China Robot Industry Development Report 2018". Also released on the same day is the "2018 China Robot Industry Analysis Report" in both English and Chinese. Based on the rapid development of China's robotics industry in 2017, these two reports comprehensively analyze the development trends and characteristics of the global and China's robotics industry. By judging the status quo, summarizing the problems, and looking into the future, we hope to be the enterprises and startups of the robotic industry chain. Investment institutions provide valuable basis for decision making.

Overall growth profile and forecasting Industry still has three major challenges

In recent years, the overall market size of the Chinese robot industry has further expanded. In 2017, the overall scale of China's robot industry exceeded RMB 120 billion, a year-on-year increase of 25.4%, and its growth rate remained the first in the world. The report predicts that in 2018, China's robot market will reach 8.74 billion US dollars. Among them, industrial robots are 6.23 billion US dollars, service robots are 1.84 billion US dollars, and special robots are 670 million US dollars. From 2013 to 2018, the average growth rate of China's robot market will reach 29.7%.

However, in the gratifying environment, there are still many challenges. For example, the Chinese robot industry has not completely reversed the situation that core components rely on imports; the conversion rate of industrial technology achievements is low; the national robot standard system still cannot meet the actual needs of rapid market development.

The two reports summarize the industry developments in industry, services and specialty robots in recent years.

2013-2017 China Industrial Robots Use Density and Growth Rate

Industrial robot field: handling loading and unloading robots currently account for the highest proportion

In the field of industrial robots, China accounts for about one-third of the global market share and is the world's largest industrial robot application market. With the rapid growth of China's manufacturing application demand, in 2017, China's industrial robots maintained rapid growth. Industrial robots sold 146,000 units, an increase of 67.7% year-on-year. The density of use reached 88 units/10,000, surpassing the global average for the first time. According to the type of application, in 2017, the domestic market for loading and unloading robots accounted for the highest proportion, reaching 65%.

Domestic cooperative robot sales volume from 2014 to 2020

According to the report, in 2017, the sales volume of industrial cooperative robots in China reached 4,200 units, and the growth rate in the next three years will remain above 70%. The report predicts that with the domestically produced replacement of the three core components of China-made collaborative robots, and with the advantage of lower product prices, local companies are expected to achieve cornering overtaking in the market competition.

Medical, cleaning, and entertainment robots are currently the three hot spots

In the field of service robots, the report analyzes that due to the accelerated population aging trend and the continued strong demand for medical and educational services, China has huge market potential and development space in this field.

Domestic cooperative robot sales volume from 2014 to 2020

New number of service robot companies in 2010-2017

Since 2015, the annual growth rate of service robot enterprises has slowed down, and some enterprises have to withdraw from competition due to lack of capital or core technology support. At the same time, scarce and high-growth companies are still sought after by markets and capital, such as logistics robots, educational robots and medical robots.

As of July 2017, the number of domestic service robot patents has reached 24,094. From the perspective of patent layout, medical robots have the most active technological innovations, followed by cleaning and entertainment robots.

As of July 2017, in the total of 24,000 Chinese service robot patent applications, medical, cleaning and entertainment robots are the top three hot spots. The report predicts that in 2018, China's service robot market is expected to reach US$1.84 billion, an increase of approximately 43.9% year-on-year, higher than the growth rate of the global service robot market. By 2020, with the rapid development of robots such as parking robots and supermarket robots, the service robot market in China is expected to exceed 4 billion US dollars.

Special robotics field: The market size is expected to reach 1.07 billion US dollars in 2020

Special robots have achieved rapid development because they can replace human beings in fire, disaster relief, and security in more complex environments. According to the report, the current special robots already have a certain level of autonomous intelligence. Through the comprehensive use of sensors such as vision and pressure, and continuous optimization of control algorithms, tasks such as positioning, navigation, obstacle avoidance, and tracking can be accomplished.

According to the data in the report, the emergency rescue robots in the special robot market segment account for 32% and 8% respectively in the global and Chinese special robot market. It can be seen that China's emergency rescue robots still have great market development potential.

The report predicts that in 2018, China's special robot market will reach 670 million US dollars, with a growth rate of 23.2%, higher than the global level. Among them, the market size of military application robots, extreme working robots and emergency rescue robots is expected to be 470 million US dollars, 150 million US dollars and 50 million US dollars respectively. By 2020, the domestic market demand for special robots is expected to reach 1.07 billion US dollars.