From significant milestone of human civilization development, cores of former industrial revolutions are motorization, electrification and networking. The industrial revolution facing us is informatization and its root issue is how to improve labor productivity. With application of AI, 5G, IoT and other technologies, service robots are a core mode to improve productivity.

2021 World Robot Conference was opened in September 10. In the seminar of intelligent service robot ecology coordination and production and education integration held by Chinese Institute of Electronics, honored guests from academic, industry and industrial circles get to the leading edge of the industry, carry out deep discussion and share incisive understanding around relevant hot topics such as development tendency, technical innovation and production and education integration of intelligent service robots.

Service robot ushering in “Golden era” and capital market weighing continuously

Robots are a significant index to judge national innovation capability and industrial competitiveness, and become a significant starting point for a new round of technical and industrial revolution globally. The breakthrough of AI technology and reduction of core part costs speed up penetration of service robots in each field, and its industrial scale shows rapid expansion tendency and huge potential development space over the years. In the past five years, growth speed of Chinese service robot industry is higher than the average growth speed worldwide and its market scale accounts for over 25% worldwide. Meanwhile, with global competitive advantage in terms of industrial chain and environment, it is expected to become a leader in global service robot field.

According to the information in 2021 Market Research Report for Chinese Commercial Service Robot issued during the forum, the commercial service robot industry is growing at high speed and included in the development outline planning of “the Fourteenth Five-Year Plan”. Governments at all levels introduce supporting industrial policies to provide policy assurance for continuous and steady industrial development. Policy system, economic environment, labor supply and commercial demand are four major influence factors that jointly drive the development of Chinese service robot industry. The development of Chinese service robot industry begins to take shape under the joint effect of these factors. There is still huge development potential and growth space in the future. It is predicted that the market scale of the service scene in 2025 is expected to break 100 billion yuan.

Zhang Zhibin, Director of Intel (China) strategic cooperation and innovation business, expresses his optimistic attitude towards the industrial development for flourishing market demand. He said computer and cellphone, two great inventions in the history of science, was born over the past 30-odd years; they are everywhere and push forward revolution of the era. Currently, the service robot industry has become technical leader of the new era with wide application of cloud computing, network, edge computing, terminal and other technologies. The core of industrial competition will be the comprehensive accumulation of technology, scene and resource. Individual scene customization and industrial digital empowerment will become a significant mode for value appreciation of service robot manufacturers. It not only has creation capability for intelligent urban operation system but also research, development and application capability for robots to create more individual application scenes for service robots. It will play active demonstration and promotion role in the industrial development undoubtedly.

Logistics delivery service is expected to become a new growth point for the service robot market. In recent years, domestic express delivery orders grow rapidly and it is up to 50 billion orders in the first half year, exceeding the annual orders in 2018. It is anticipated over 100 billion orders will be achieved this year. On the contrary, aging population in China is increasingly serious. It is anticipated newborns in 2021 is only 8 million populations. In the five years to come, labor gap in the express delivery industry will maintain between 7 and 10 million. The robot logistics delivery service is extremely urgent and the segment market contains huge development potential.

Liu Ming, Head of Intelligent Driving Center and Robot and Multisensory Lab under The Hong Kong University of Science and Technology, said the difficulty in enterprise employment will exist continuously for a long time with vanish of demographic dividend. The growing market demand cannot be met even if all future newborns engage in the express delivery industry. Therefore, vehicle standard logistics robots at low speed or unmanned logistics vehicles shall be vigorously developed for the delivery service. This is inevitable for the social development.

An Xiangjiang, former Deputy Director and Doctoral Supervisor of Unmanned System Research Institute under National University of Defense Technology, holds the same viewpoint. He made a bold prediction in the keynote speech that the cost crossing point of technology substituting manpower will be ushered in 2025 and robots have huge development potential in the end logistics field with increasing manpower cost from increasingly mature automatic driving technology and aging population.

Repeated “action” of the capital market also confirms the “blooming” market. According to 2021 Market Research Report for Chinese Commercial Service Robot, Chinese service robots have gained over 60 billion financing on the capital market since 2018. And financing frequency exceeds hundred times from January to July in 2021, about to surpass the annual financing in 2020. Financing amount is far beyond annual financing amount since 2018. Investment vitality of the service robot track recovers rapidly.

Getting through infrastructure, integrated robot intelligence being the key of human-machine integration

Service robots are about to usher in a golden era. But we also notice large scale commercial implementation has not been formed after over 60 years of robot development. What is the root cause that hinders its development? In the opinion of Sun Yun, Senior Vice President of Terminus Technology Group, the primary cause is lack of supporting infrastructures. Sun Yun analyzes the current situation of robots deeply from the historical development angle in his keynote speech of Human · Robot · City. Looking back on the past, “the same width of track” from First Emperor of Qin defines the infrastructure standard for carriage as the main tool. Construction of the road system makes countries represented by the U.S. stand on the wheel. Today vehicle infrastructure cooperation becomes a significant support for unmanned automatic driving again in the era of intelligent traveling and unmanned automatic driving.

Drawing lessons from the history, the large-scale commercial application of robots also requires construction of infrastructures. Sun Yun said AI CITY ROBOTS of Terminus aims at realizing a jump from robot group intelligence to integrated intelligence in terms of intelligent infrastructures and intelligent services in digital cities. Realize exchanging of extra goods and sharing of data platforms among robots; realize interconnectivity between robots and all AIoT equipment in cities and create robots to the super access to intelligent cities in the future. Lead robots to human-machine integration successfully through building the unique top design to drive large scale commercial implementation of robots and accelerate outburst of the industrial turning point.

The idea of “human-machine integration” is also agreed by Sun Fuchun, Vice President of Chinese Association for Artificial Intelligence, Professor and Doctoral Supervisor of Tsinghua University. In this subsequent keynote speech, Vice President Sun Fuchun points out the core robot technology shall realize breakthrough in touch and smell information fields and requires flexible operation, initiative sensing and intelligent decision-making to realize human-machine integration, the development target of robots.

Besides, several participant experts agree with supporting infrastructure construction restricting large scale commercial application of robots in the discussion. An Xiangjing, former Deputy Director and Doctoral Supervisor of Unmanned System Research Institute under National University of Defense Technology, said we are in the best era and machine and human shall be complementary in capability and space. It is our hope to open up special unmanned driving vehicles as soon as possible and release the wide road rights to specified sections in specified time to make people and robots create a bright future harmoniously.

It is certain that development of future cities will be driven by data. The intelligent service from digital city will be provided by robots. Like a test platform, evolution of cities will connect with various technologies and robots will give full play to different advantages in various forms to build our survival environment. Terminus unveils “Titan planet plan” and signs strategic cooperation with BYD Electronic and Chinese Academy of Sciences to focus on joint platform development of vehicle standard interactive host computer system, establish a joint innovative center together and provide solutions to coordinated development and deep industrial integration of intelligent service robot environment.