I. Collaborative robot industry overview     

       The trend of industrial robotics in 2019 is human-robot collaboration.
       In factories and non-manufacturing fields, a common workplace without fence separation between humans and robots opens up new possibilities and concepts. Collaborative robots support operators in different workplaces, enabling higher flexibility in the production process to increase productivity, achieving a high degree of flexibility in the production site, and enabling rapid updates to the production model for process management variants, while collaborative robots in logistics centers and warehouses can handle the growing volume of orders.
       As the concept of Industry 4.0 spreads and the field of artificial intelligence develops rapidly, robots are penetrating more and more applications, and the focus is now also on collaborative robots, with intelligent and safer robots that can work together with people in the same work environment without risk, and the scope of collaborative robot applications is not limited to industrial production and quality control.
       GGII data shows that in 2017, China's industrial robot sales reached 136,000 units, up 60% year-on-year, with collaborative robots accounting for 3.09% of sales, up 0.45 percentage points year-on-year, and the proportion of collaborative robot sales in China is expected to reach 3.8% by 2018 and 5.5% by 2020.

Future application trends

1. The market pattern of industrial applications is not yet determined, and the service sector may become a new blue ocean
       At present, the domestic collaborative robot market applications are mainly focused on 3C electronics, automotive and its parts, home appliances and other industries, in addition to the industrial sector, collaborative robots in the commercial service sector also have greater development prospects. In addition to the industrial field, collaborative robots also have a greater prospect of development in the commercial service field. Among them, including the current more popular logistics and warehousing and medical two fields. One way to pick goods in logistics and warehousing is to use AGVs mounted on collaborative robots, and the market for logistics and warehousing will be immeasurable. In addition, because of the safety of collaborative robots and the flexibility of robotic arms to mimic human arms, collaborative robots are ideal for use in rehabilitation robots and prosthetic robots.
       GGII believes that in the short term, the industrial sector is still the main application market for collaborative robots, but competition will become increasingly fierce; in the long term, the service sector has the opportunity to become a new blue ocean of application.
2、Collaborative robots equipped with AGVs form a composite robot
       The combination of collaborative robots and AGV trolleys makes collaborative robots no longer limited to a certain unit, area and type of work, but elevated to a "free robot" in the production line team, not only for handling and scheduling between processes, but also for deploying robots to any work station according to the needs of production expansion. The robot can be deployed to any workstation to participate in production, or work together with the operator in a specific safety zone.
3. Collaborative robots can be equipped with a variety of flexible fixtures to do more work
       In order to further improve the flexibility of collaborative robots, more and more flexible fixtures will be used in applications, and these end-effectors will increasingly become the core components of robot applications.
       Under this development trend, enterprises at home and abroad are increasingly emphasizing the function of rapid fixture replacement of collaborative robots, which can fully automatically replace and identify any tool or grip claw, and the operator can program the robot motion path and all the docking fixture or grip claw movements by dragging and dropping at once, without using hand-held instructors, truly realizing hand-held programming.
4、Deeply cultivate the niche industry, innovative products is the way to the long-term development of enterprises
       As a new product type of industrial robots, collaborative robots are still in the process of iteration and upgrading, while the functions and technical parameters of collaborative robots are not yet fully finalized and still cannot meet the actual needs of some special application scenarios. Therefore, in the future market competition, deep plowing the application segment and production link, comprehensive polishing the combination of product function and application process, and forming a replicable process package will be the way for collaborative robot enterprises to develop in the long run.