China’s Cobots: Big Job Ahead

Included in that five-year span was the flourishing of artificial intelligence/machine learning (AI/ML), which was quickly grafted to robotics.

Cobot automation is now about to renew its process of expansion, and China’s cobots seem ready.

Here are the current world leaders in cobot sales. There are only two, AUBO and Siasun, that are homegrown contenders; each has a visible but minor slice of a sales pie that Universal Robots overwhelmingly dominates.

To date, overall penetration of cobots into China’s marketplace has been less than spectacular. Experts say that China’s factories acquired a little over 5,000 cobots in 2019, which is up 20 percent from 2018.

Worldwide, stats from the International Federation of Robotics (IFR) put global sales of cobots at around 14,000 in 2019. Miniscule!

The number is so small, in fact, that there’s really no cobot vendor with an insurmountable lead in China. They are all virtually still in the starting blocks. One, two or maybe three vendors from China’s own domestic cobot industry may well have a good chance at prevailing.

Barely a decade old (UR sold the first cobot in 2008), cobotics is still automation’s new kid on the block, but it has shown itself to be the most versatile industrial robot yet developed. The range of jobs cobots have taken on is seemingly without limit; plus cobotics is doubtless the recipient of many of the new tech advances in vision systems and other sensors, edge computing, gripper tech, and AI/ML. Most robot industry tradeshows seem to be all about cobots to the exclusion of their big brother industrial robots.

The cobot is an ideal match for China’s SME factories and the universe of goods produced in them.

Although worldwide sales are barely 4 percent of all industrial robots purchased, forecasters effusively continue to peg cobots to skyrocket in popularity and sales. The Cobotics World catalog boasts 150 cobot models from some 50-plus developers.

China has all the necessary elements going on to easily become the breakout country for cobots.

China’s cobots
The next two years may be the best chance ever for China’s cobots. In a post-trade war, post-COVID, Sinophobic world that’s temporarily taking a few steps back from Chinese everything, 2020-2021 could present itself as the perfect storm for homegrown automation gear.

Throw into that mix a new Five-Year Plan (2021) and a rising sense of nationalism counteracting Sinophobia (as in buy China, boycott all else), and maybe a new tune like “all for one and one for all” echoing from the annual session of the National People’s Congress, and yes, China’s cobots could have a best-ever start.

So, which of the Sino-cobot vendors are going to leap out and vigorously pursue all that market potential?  And who exactly are these homegrown tech stars and what are they offering?

Here is a Top 10 list of Chinese contenders, each with the tech gear and business organization to best succeed. In alpha order: AUBO, Elephant, Elibot, Han’s Robot, HIT Group, Jaka Robot, Peitian, Rokae, Siasun, and Yteam.

The mission of each is to get their brand in front of every SME as possible; butcher, baker, candlestick maker, all of them! Price and quality will be paramount. Service and training will convert customers into friends, especially since they are resident in China and readily available. Geography is an ally: UR’s only factory is 5,000 miles away in Denmark; Doosan and TechMan (Quanta Computer), two other cobot leaders, manufacture in Korea and Taiwan, respectively.