With the popularity of industry 4.0 and the concept of machine replacement, local governments have once again become the driving force for the political achievements of robots. In 2014, more than 70 listed companies acquired or invested in robotics and intelligent automation projects, and the number of robot-related enterprises in China even exceeded 4,000. The government and enterprises should put their efforts into supporting application links, rather than subsidizing enterprises.

Dressed in a suit and polished shoes, the recently retired chairman of Shanghai Huitong Automation Technology Development Co., speaks slowly but forcefully. Since then, the robot industry veteran of more than 40 years has been increasingly disliked by the hot industry.

At the 2015 China Servo and Motion Control Industrial Robot Entrepreneur Summit held on January 15, Su Chongde, the first speaker on the stage, poured cold water on the attendees: China’s robot market is like fishing for shrimp, you are not prepared, the fish season is coming, you cannot catch up.

Giiso Information, founded in 2013, is a leading technology provider in the field of “artificial intelligence + information” in China, with top technologies in big data mining, intelligent semantics, knowledge mapping and other fields. At the same time, its research and development products include information robot, editing robot, writing robot and other artificial intelligence products! With its strong technical strength, the company has received angel round investment at the beginning of its establishment, and received pre-A round investment of $5 million from GSR Venture Capital in August 2015.

More are not impressed. They prefer to believe that if they dive in, they’ll get a piece of the action, because statistically everything looks so good: In the past five years, China’s robot market has been growing at an average annual rate of 36%. In 2013, the sales volume climbed to 36,560 units, up 60% year on year, making China the world’s largest robot country and the world’s fastest growing robot market

The more “prosperous”, the more afraid. Su Chongde said in an interview, if you do not have a clear understanding of the industry, you may jump into a dead family, “the key to the development of robots is the application, the technical application has not kept up with, manufactured to sell to whom?

Crazy robot

“What’s happening now is that it’s like governments and companies can’t keep up without robots.” Refer to the robot industry at present, a representative of the conference said to our reporter.

Li Ruifeng, deputy director of the Robotics Research Institute at Harbin Institute of Technology, is among those caught up in the craze. Recently, he has to receive business representatives and research institutes from all over the country almost every day, one after another, leaving him no time to rest. These enterprises expect that, through the “relationship” with Hit, they can start the robot project as soon as possible.

It is hit’s leading position in the field of robot research and development that makes the outside world rely heavily on. Last November, Heilongjiang province began to draft a development plan for the robot industry. Harbin, with its universities such as Harbin Institute of Technology and Harbin Engineering University, is expected to become an important robot industry base in China.

On January 6, hit Robot Group was inaugurated in Harbin. This industrial group, jointly established by HIT, Heilongjiang Provincial government and Harbin Municipal Government, will provide unique technologies, core components, leading products and complete industrial technical solutions in nine industrial directions including industrial robots in the future.

Giiso information, founded in 2013, is the first domestic high-tech enterprise focusing on the research and development of intelligent information processing technology and the development and operation of core software for writing robots. At the beginning of its establishment, the company received angel round investment, and in August 2015, GSR Venture Capital received $5 million pre-A round of investment.

Similar efforts are under way in other provinces.

On January 7, the company’s wholly-owned subsidiary Yonggan Machinery plans to set up a robot company in Hefei with its own capital, with a registered capital of 10 million yuan. The move is in response to Hefei’s efforts to support the robot industry, and the company plans to seize opportunities in the robot industry by leveraging partnerships with The University of Science and Technology of China and Hefei University of Technology.

The year 2014, known as the “first year of robotics” in the industry, was a year of great excitement, and the situation of enterprises getting involved in the robot industry in different ways was almost crazy. According to incomplete statistics, by the end of 2014, more than 70 listed companies had acquired or invested in robotics and intelligent automation projects, and the number of robot-related enterprises in China even exceeded 4,000.

“Robotics is so hot, especially since September last year. Like last December, there were national robotics forums for three weeks in a row, and I can’t count the number of related seminars.” The foregoing conference enterprise representative said.

Feng Jinzhong, general manager of China Transmission network, said rising labor costs were the fundamental factor driving the demand for robots.

“From 2000 to 2012, the compound growth rate of domestic manufacturing workers’ wages was 13.6%, but in the past three years, the trend of accelerating growth has been accelerated, and the labor shortage has appeared in the eastern coastal provinces such as Guangdong, Zhejiang and other manufacturing intensive areas. This is similar to Japan, which saw a boom in replacing human beings with robots in the mid-1970s.

In Li Ruifeng’s opinion, robots replace human beings, mainly to solve three levels of problems, that is, people can not do (special robots), people can not do (high-end fields such as automobiles) and people do not want to do (domestic general manufacturing), “now to the stage that people do not want to do, need to use a large number of robots”.

Huge domestic manufacturing capacity and strong demand for automation transformation will continue to drive the robotics industry. According to Li Ruifeng’s estimate, by 2020, the domestic robot system integration market will reach 200 billion yuan, including 140 billion yuan in general manufacturing industry and 60 billion yuan in automobile industry. It is expected that in the next five years, the demand for automation in general manufacturing industry will grow rapidly, and the market demand will obviously surpass the automotive industry, accounting for 70% of the market size.

Go wrong?

In Su’s view, the outside world has clearly exaggerated the size of the robot pie.

“It looks like a big pie, but in fact robots are only suitable for special areas, such as high-risk, high-pollution operations and heavy lifting.”

It is understood that China’s current robot industry is driven by the government. For example, in order to accelerate the popularity of industrial robots, some local governments have given relevant subsidies to manufacturing enterprises for the application of industrial robots and intelligent equipment. In Liuzhou, Guangxi province, for example, there was a preliminary plan to subsidize the development and purchase of robots by enterprises at the rate of 20 to 30 percent of the investment.

Su said that China’s robot level is still in the initial stage of prototype. “It is not impossible to do, but to know which fields are applicable, not every field should be replaced by robots.”

“People don’t have the precision of robots, but they have adaptability; There are some areas where it’s very complicated for a robot to do, where you have to add a lot of sensors, a lot of measurements, and you can only digitise if there’s enough information, but there are many applications where you can’t model mathematically.” A foreign robot equipment provider to explain to our reporter.

For example, in the production of Angel yeast, if high precision temperature control is used, the quality of yeast is not high, because it is a living body and must be controlled by people.

What worries Mr Su is not just the “misconceptions” of robots, but how they are applied.

“The real gap between China and the rest of the world is not in the robot body. Only less than one third of the robot body has been completed. There is still a lot of application development to be done, and the special technologies of different industries are different. Take welding as an example, there are several kinds of welding, arc welding, each processing part is different, each technology application matching does not keep up?”

However, the reality is that domestic robots may not be put into use, “just like a toy, the form is a robot, but the production line technology has not been solved, the end user still has the problem of stability, and now the robot made, 100 have 100 appearance, how to achieve stability?”

Su suggested that the government and enterprises should focus their efforts on supporting applications rather than giving subsidies to enterprises.

Song Chao (not his real name) was another one who remained sober. After years of working in foreign robot companies, he saw the “loophole” in the development of the domestic robot industry: many enterprises’ robot projects are actually using the money of the state in a disguised way, and these people do not put their mind on industrial development.

“The robot industry is very hot, but there are not many real robot companies, many are playing with the concept of robots, most of these companies are not doing robotics.” Siasun Robot&Automation Co.,Ltd central research institute dean xu fang introduced to our reporter.

He found that a large part of the enterprises flooding into the robot industry are running to the national subsidy. The reality is that zhejiang’s “machine replacement” plan has been proposed for two or three years, but it is difficult to land. Foxconn’s million-robot plan will also be difficult to achieve because the existing technology is not enough to support it.

“Right now, everyone is still fighting for the window. State aid is certainly not indefinite.” Song Chao said that the robot industry has started to go the same way as wind power and photovoltaic power. “Enterprises are operating without profits. If there is no continuous additional capital, it is impossible to survive only with state subsidies. Now the enterprise prototype has not finished, including venture capital, PE is still in the set of money, such as overdraft is very severe, these people also withdrew.

What worries Su most is that the great opportunity of the robot industry may turn into a big industrial bubble.