Robot era

China’s robot industry has developed rapidly in recent years, and sales of China’s industrial robots have increased 35 percent every year on average.

The International Federation of Robotics estimates that China’s robot shipments reached 90,000 in 2016, a historic high for a single country. It is forecast that China’s shipments of robots will have almost doubled to 160,000 in 2019.

China’s robot market has reached $11 billion, and 31 percent of the world’s robots are made in China. The Chinese government is aiming to expand the share to 50 percent by 2020.

Robots play a key role in the Chinese government’s national strategic manufacturing plan Made in China 2025, which aims to promote China’s industries to a highly-automated and technically advanced level, especially in the automobile, electronics and logistics sectors.

The World Robot Conference is being held in Beijing from Aug 23 to Aug 27. In the main forum of the conference on Aug 23, China released its innovation and development road map for the robotics industry, which advances establishing China as a global robot industry innovation center by 2025.

China’s industrial robot speech recognition and image recognition systems have already reached an internationally advanced level and it has made breakthroughs in other key areas such as servo motors.