China's mobile robots (AGVs) have developed rapidly over the past 20 years, from scratch to large, from large to strong, spanning the two major industries of logistics and robotics, and achieved world-renowned achievements. With the disappearance of China's demographic dividend and the transformation of domestic industries, various robots are widely used and the market space is huge. Domestic mobile robots have become a jewel in the field of robotics. From independent technology and product development to the competitiveness of going abroad, it can be said that it is not inferior to foreign counterparts, and sales are growing at an average rate of more than 30% every year. .
The strong performance of mobile robots is related to a wide range of national economic production needs. The development of China Mobile Robot has increased dramatically from the incremental demand for products. The author believes that it has gone through three stages.
The first stage is from the 1990s to 2010. It belongs to the primary development stage, mainly because China's independent research and development and cooperation are introduced, and there are no more than 5 domestic enterprises capable of producing AGV. The annual shipment of AGV is very low, and users are mainly concentrated in Industries such as tobacco and automobiles.
Since 2010, it has entered the second stage. With the rapid development of China's automobile industry, mobile robots with high cost performance, light load and low positioning accuracy are rapidly being promoted in the four major workshops of automobile powertrain, stamping, welding and final assembly.
Mobile robot applied to the chassis of a car
By the end of 2018, this kind of material distribution mode has been applied to all domestic brand automobile factories, and the number of AGV applications has increased geometrically.
The third stage of the explosion was that after Amazon acquired Kiva in 2014 and adopted a large number of mobile robots, domestic e-commerce companies followed suit and deployed rack handling robots in the storage and sorting fields, which became a new hot spot in the development of the AGV market in recent years. The new mobile robot companies are also growing like mushrooms, and are being hailed by capital.
I. Review of the development of China Mobile Robotics (AGV) industry in 2018
In the 2018 China mobile robot industry, it can be called “Hundred Flowers”. Due to the strong domestic market demand, AGV's new application areas, new models, and old model transformations have created many innovations, which have created a group of manufacturers who have been deeply cultivating a certain field and have achieved good results. The market sales continue to expand, such as Shenyang Xinsong. This important stage of the Winter Olympics shows the technology and capabilities of China Mobile Robots to the world.
According to incomplete statistics, in 2012, the number of domestically produced AGV entities was less than 20, reaching 60 in December 2015 and 120 in 2018.
According to the statistics of the New Strategic Robot Industry Research Institute, the number of AGV enterprises with domestic sales exceeding 100 million yuan has exceeded 10 in 2018. In 2018, the capacity of China's AGV market exceeded 4 billion yuan. The shipment of AGV forklifts exceeded 1000 for the first time. station.
From the perspective of regional market concentration, China's AGV market will remain in a concentrated state.
The Pearl River Delta and the Yangtze River Delta are still the main gathering places of AGV. It can be seen that the regional market concentration of AGV is close to the monopoly state, and the concentration of AGV regions is gradually increasing. On the whole, the future of Guangdong, Jiangsu, Shanghai, Zhejiang and other regions may be the key development areas of China's AGV industry.
