It's started: Robot Uprising Begins as China Turns to Machines to Fill in Gaps in the Workforce

[AndrewJin]

I think a real dog. Its equipment is special, however.

Thank god, it scared me!

 

[Shotgunner51]

It's from last years but the video is good, take a look:

China Is Building a Robot Army of Model Workers
Can China reboot its manufacturing industry—and the global economy—by replacing millions of workers with machines?
Will Knight April 26, 2016

“It is very clear in China: people will either go into automation or they will go out of the manufacturing business.” - Gerald Wong, CEO of Cambridge Industries Group

“In the future, what I see is China being more creative [in robotics],” - Kai Yu, founder of Horizon Robotics and was previously the head of an AI-focused research lab set up by Baidu. “Original design, original ideas, but also some of the fundamental technologies, like deep learning, neural networks, artificial intelligence.”

https://www.technologyreview.com/s/601215/china-is-building-a-robot-army-of-model-workers/​

 

[cirr]

Parking by robot coming to Nanjing next month

2017-06-19 11:31

China Daily Editor: Feng Shuang

China's parking lot of tomorrow－a multistory garage that uses robot "valets" to take vehicles to empty spaces－will open in Nanjing next month, according to the technology company behind the project.

The facility, built as part of a new shopping mall near the city's Confucius Temple, covers 2,400 square meters and has 57 parking spaces and two robots.

Drivers will park on the first floor, and the robots－flat platforms on wheels－will transport the cars to the second floor using elevators, according to Yu Lei, general manager of the Jiangsu office of Shenzhen Yeefung Automation Technology Co, which developed the smart system.

The machines are 4.8 meters long, 1.8 meters wide and 0.35 meters tall, and can carry vehicles weighing up to 2.5 metric tons.

"The first floor of the garage consists of robots, elevators and a control system, while parking spaces are situated on the second floor," Yu said. "Drivers will leave their cars on the first floor, where the control systems will examine the size and weight of each car."

Robots will follow routes calculated by the system and park the cars in specified spaces using laser alignment equipment.

When drivers return to collect their cars, they will wait on the first floor as the robots locate their vehicle, reversing the trip.

Drivers can use a smartphone app to book parking spaces and collect their cars, with the whole parking process taking about three minutes, Yu said.

"Compared with regular garages, the smart garage covers about 40 percent less space and requires fewer workers," he said. "In fact, the garage only needs one worker on the first floor to guide drivers. The second floor requires no lighting or ventilation equipment because the robots can follow the computer's orders in the dark."

Maintenance and labor costs will also be greatly reduced, Yu said.

Ji Feng, technical director of the company, said: "We spent three years researching and testing the smart garage system. A single robot can manage up to 50 parking spaces."

"Technically, using our control system, if a garage had enough space, 100 robots could work at the same time without any collisions."

Ji said more smart garages will be established in Chinese cities, adding that construction of the country's second smart garage will get underway soon in neighboring Zhejiang province.

http://www.ecns.cn/2017/06-19/261994.shtml

 

[cirr]

First robot couriers hit the road

2017-06-19 14:43

People's Daily Online Editor: Gu Liping

robot courier (People's Daily)

item delivered by robot courier (People's Daily)

On June 18, students at six Chinese universities received items they had purchased from JD.com from robot couriers.

Still a pilot project, the robots were dispatched to just half a dozen universities, including Renmin University, Tsinghua University and Zhejiang University. At JD.com delivery stations, items were first divided among the robots according to size. The smart robots were then able to plan their routes with the help of an automatic navigation system, which also assists them in avoiding obstacles en route.

They follow preset routes and send messages to the recipients when they are 100 meters away from their destinations. The robots can move as quickly as electric bikes, though they are set to walk at the speed of pedestrians when on campus. They also slow down in advance of speed bumps.

University students will be the first group to benefit from the new technology. Considering the openness of college students when it comes to hi-tech products, JD.com will highlight its 1,300 delivery stations at universities as the promotional campaign for robot couriers kicks off.

http://www.ecns.cn/2017/06-19/262030.shtml

 

[TaiShang]

E-commerce giant launches robot courier
By Ma Chi | chinadaily.com.cn | Updated: 2017-06-20


A student picks up a delivery from a JD.com robot courier at Renmin University in Beijing on June 18. [Photo/Chinanews.com]

JD.com Inc, one of China's biggest online marketplaces, has launched its first robot couriers.

A robot courier delivered the first item to Renmin University, the alma mater of CEO Liu Qiangdong, in Beijing on Sunday. Other schools the robot couriers sent packages to include Tsinghua University, Zhejiang University and Chang'an University.

The vehicles follow optimal routes based on calculation, and send messages to recipients five minutes before reaching the destinations. The recipients obtain the packages with facial recognition or by inputting a code.

The robot couriers, equipped with laser radars and cameras, are capable of avoiding obstacles on routes and recognizing traffic lights. With different sizes, they move three to four km/hour and can deliver six to 20 items in one trip.

JD.com will further expand its fleet of robot couriers to more than 100 this year, mainly in universities and residential communities in Beijing, Hangzhou of Zhejiang province, and Xi'an of Shaanxi province.

A robot courier on a test operation at Renmin University, Beijing, June 14. [Photo/VCG]

***

This semester might be a it late, but, next semester, this cute delivery robot will be a nice companion to take graduation pictures with.

 

[onebyone]

 

[JSCh]

China unveils first nuclear emergency response robots
(People's Daily Online) 15:42, June 21, 2017

China has unveiled and deployed its first batch of nuclear emergency response robots, which are designed to guarantee the safety of nuclear power plants.

Four nuclear emergency response robots, jointly designed by China General Nuclear Power Corporation (CGN) and the Institute of Optics and Electronics under the Chinese Academy of Sciences, have been serving at Daya Bay Nuclear Power Plant in southern China’s Guangdong province since last November.

The four robots are responsible for both land and underwater missions, including salvaging and observations.

According to Feng Chang, a leader of the research and development team for the robots, they are able to withstand temperatures of up to 65 degrees Celsius and nuclear radiation at up to 10,000 Sv per hour. They are not only built from radiation-resistant material, each robot’s structure is carefully planned to ensure that it is radiation-proof as a whole.

Each robot is equipped with the best radiation-resistant camera in the world. In a work environment with nuclear radiation of 10,000 Sv per hour, the robots can still send images at 600 lines per inch.

“Ordinary robots, built with metal or rubber covers, easily burn under strong nuclear radiation. Their digital transmission devices stop working, and even the lenses of their cameras turn black,” Feng told Science and Technology Daily.

“The heaviest robot in a set of four is about 100 kilograms. In the case of a nuclear accident, all four robots could be packed and delivered in a single container,” Feng explained, adding that the robots can also play an important role in the daily maintenance of nuclear power plants.

 

[cirr]

China Deploys First Nuclear Emergency Response Robots
Jun 23, 2017

Nuclear emergency response robots

China has unveiled its first batch of nuclear emergency response robots, which are designed to ensure the safety of nuclear power plants.

Four nuclear emergency response robots, jointly designed by China General Nuclear Power Corporation (CGN) and the Institute of Optics and Electronics of the Chinese Academy of Sciences, have been serving at Daya Bay Nuclear Power Plant in southern China’s Guangdong province since last November. The four robots are responsible for both land and underwater missions, including salvaging and observations.

According to FENG Chang, a leader of the research and development team for the robots, they are able to withstand temperatures of up to 65 degrees Celsius and nuclear radiation at up to 10,000 Sv per hour. They are not only built from radiation-resistant material, each robot’s structure is carefully planned to ensure that it is radiation-proof as a whole.

Each robot is equipped with the best radiation-resistant camera in the world. In a work environment with nuclear radiation of 10,000 Sv per hour, the robots can still send images at 600 lines per inch.

"Ordinary robots, built with metal or rubber covers, easily burn under strong nuclear radiation. Their digital transmission devices stop working, and even the lenses of their cameras turn black," FENG told Science and Technology Daily. "The heaviest robot in a set of four is about 100 kilograms."

http://english.cas.cn/newsroom/news/201706/t20170623_178649.shtml

 

[cirr]

Kuka to build personal assistance robot business with Midea

JUNE 19, 2017 SAM FRANCIS

Some of the products Midea manufactures

Kuka, one of the world’s largest manufacturers of industrial robotic arms, is planning to expand into the area of personal assistance robotics.

This is according to an article on FT.com, which quotes Kuka chief executive Till Reuter.

Reuter told the FT that he sees potential for using Midea’s reach into the household appliances market to develop more complex, intelligent machines which can help with household tasks.

Midea is the Chinese maker of such things as washing machines, fridge-freezers, vacuum cleaners and cookers, and it is effectively the parent company of Kuka, having bought the majority of the robot maker’s shares earlier this year.

Reuter told the FT: “Midea is not doing any robotics or automation, so Kuka is automation for Midea. And they are very well connected to the consumer industry. So together we want to do consumer robotics.”

He said the way Kuka is approaching the consumer market is through its lightweight, collaborative robots, which are safe enough for use by anyone with very little training.

In the past, and still now, the majority of industrial robots were large machines built for use inside caged-off areas on heavy manufacturing tasks and were dangerous for humans to be around.

Collaborative robots tend to be much smaller and can often be small enough to fit on a table-top, and they come with sensors which slow it down or make it stop when it detects movement, usually by a human, next to it or in contact with it.

While collaborative robots are still used mainly in business environments, the technology that they use would enable them to become more popular in households, provided they take the appropriate, marketable forms.

Midea, meanwhile, makes goods for every typical household, and is likely to look into making some of those robotic – for example, a robotic vacuum cleaner would be an obvious possibility.

Reuter did not say specifically what Kuka and Midea have got planned, if anything, but Midea’s recent partnership with Yaskawa to develop personal assistance robots may be an indication as to the direction of the development.

Among the products Midea and Yaskawa are developing are exercise bikes for the elderly, and toilets for the bed-ridden.

The ageing population of China and Japan, where Yaskawa is headquartered, make the partnership and the general move into personal assistance robots a logical commercial choice.

The companies may opt for a device such as Amazon’s Alexa-enabled Echo, or Google Home, or Apple HomePod as a central point of contact between human and the household machines, although this is just speculation.

http://roboticsandautomationnews.co...l-assistance-robot-business-with-midea/13015/

 

[Shotgunner51]

Kuka to build personal assistance robot business with Midea

Good, the strategic acquisition yields synergy!

 

[Shotgunner51]

China’s Robot Revolution and the Boom in Factory Automation
Michelle Perez, June 8 2017

Factories in China are replacing humans with robots in a new automation-driven industrial revolution. The effects of this drive in China as well as around the globe will be huge. Since 2013, China has bought more industrial robots each year than any other country, including high-tech manufacturing giants such as Germany, Japan, and South Korea.

Countless manufacturers in China are planning to transform their production processes using robots and are opting for automation of their factory assembly lines at an unprecedented scale. And what’s great, this drive is being fully supported by the Government!

There was a time when China boasted the cheapest human labor. It is not the same anymore especially in comparison with rival manufacturing hubs such as Thailand, Indonesia, and Vietnam. The growing labor cost in China will not prove good for the country’s economy in the coming years. Since competition is fierce, China may not have any other choice but to quickly automate its industries. Many manufacturers and government officials believe the solution is to replace humans with machines. The revolution has already begun.

Since China manufactures almost a quarter of the world’s products, the results of this revolution in China’s industries will be felt globally. The need of the hour is to automate manufacturing processes that have never before been dealt by machines. This will turn the country into a hub of high-tech innovation. The world’s largest human labor market can be turned into the world’s largest robots and machine run economy. The concern, however, is the future of millions of workers who are currently working in China’s factories.

Many companies are quickly automating their production lines. In order to stay in business, this is the demand of the future. Although many companies have laid off even up to 80% of their human workforce for machines to take over, many processes are still being done by hand and fully automated industries are still not a reality.

In China, it is now very clear that manufacturers will either go into automation or will go out of business. There is no other way to keep up with the rapidly increasingly demands of manufacturing and increasing labor costs.

Industrial robots are replacing human labor in factories across China.
​

China’s Economy and Manufacturing

China’s focus on automation and the shift towards employing more and more industrial robots replacing human workers has its roots in a pressing economic problem.

China’s economic miracle is directly attributed to its manufacturing industry. According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, approximately 100 million people are employed in manufacturing in China and the sector accounts for almost 36 percent of China’s gross domestic product.

During the last few decades, manufacturing empires were forged in China. Since the Government opened its doors to global trade in the 1980s onwards, the availability of cheap manpower made China the world’s biggest exporter of manufactured goods. Hundreds of millions of Chinese were taken out of the shackles of extreme poverty. Millions of low-skilled workers migrated from rural areas to cities and found employment in gigantic factories, producing an unimaginable range of products, from a sewing needle to servers. China accounted for just 3 percent of global manufacturing output in 1990. Today it produces almost a quarter.

The manufacturing boom in China has benefitted consumers all around the world. Mass production has resulted in cheap technology and gadgets which are affordable for all. The massive employment opportunities in the country created a huge middle-class population. These middle-class workers started demanding higher wages than before. Thus, labor is gradually becoming expensive and is not as cheap as it once was.

Also, due to the country’s one-child policy, which is slowly being phased out now, not enough working-age population is available to work in factories as before and this population is slowly decreasing with every decade. All these factors combined have led to higher wages than before thus eroding China’s competitive advantage – cheap labor.

Therefore, if labor and manufacturing costs are not kept in check, this booming economy can fall. And its effects will be felt all around the globe. The only viable solution right now seems to be automation of Chinese industries. China already imports a huge number of industrial robots, but the country lags far behind competitors.

The Chinese government is keen to change this. The latest Five Year Plan includes subsidizing and financing automation of the country’s manufacturing units. Use of industrial robots is being promoted throughout the country and advanced manufacturing technologies will be showcased all around the country to promote this drive.

The Goal

The main aim of the whole automation drive and the massive shift towards using industrial robots instead of human workers is to overtake Germany, Japan, South Korea and the United States in terms of manufacturing sophistication by 2049 which will see centenary celebrations of the founding of the People’s Republic of China. In order to achieve this goal, manufacturers are being encouraged to shift rapidly to automated assembly lines and employ industrial robots by the millions. Another goal is to start manufacturing industrial-use robots.

All these aspirations sound great but the actual task requires enormous efforts. It cannot be done overnight. One such example is the struggles faced by Foxconn. Also known as Hon Hai Precision Industry Co. Ltd., Foxconn is a Taiwanese multinational electronics contract manufacturing giant and the world’s third-largest information technology company by revenue. Foxconn’s clients include major American, Canadian, Finnish, and Japanese electronics and information technology companies. The products manufactured by the company include BlackBerry, iPad, iPhone, iPod, Kindle, Nintendo 3DS, Nokia, PlayStation 3, PlayStation 4, Wii U, and Xbox One.

This company has employed hundreds of thousands of workers in city-size factories. The scale of production is mind blowing. In 2011, Foxconn’s founder and CEO, Terry Gou, said he expected to have a million robots in his company’s plants by 2014. Three years later, the effort had proved more challenging than expected, and just a few tens of thousands of robots had been deployed.

This is just one example. Like Foxconn, challenges are being faced by many other companies in China which are shifting from the human workforce to industrial robots. This is happening because complex programming is required for even the minutest of tasks and state-of-the-art robots that can perform any task with absolute precision are still in the stage of testing and development.

Another looming fear is the repercussion of this shift to automation and robots. The Chinese society might greatly be disturbed. Where would the currently employed 100 million workers go and what would they do once they are no longer required in the fully automated, robots-run factories of the future? This is a question many cannot answer satisfactorily. The scenario seems bleak. Such a shift would bring great economic hardship to the workers and their families which could eventually turn into widespread social unrest.

Given the economic imperative, the government’s determination, and the country’s growing technological sophistication, it seems very likely that manufacturing companies across China will automate successfully and that the country will become a leader in the technology of advanced automation.

Without a shred of doubt, the use of industrial robots and automation of the manufacturing industry is the way forward if manufacturing and the economy have to be saved in China. But due consideration needs to be given to the huge Chinese labor force. What is going to be their future is yet to unfold.

https://factschronicle.com/chinas-robot-revolution-and-the-boom-in-factory-automation-3162.html

 

[Shotgunner51]

China goes on shopping spree for industrial robots
June 17, 2017 4:25 am JST

TOKYO -- Chinese factories are eagerly enlisting robots to address worker shortages and automation needs, prompting Japanese manufacturers to scramble to boost output.

Robots made by Kawasaki Heavy Industries are busy rapidly working metal at a factory in Ningbo, a port town three and a half hours from Shanghai. After appliance parts maker Xinlu took on robots for press processing at its plant, the company slashed the workforce from 10 workers per line to just one.

"Labor costs have doubled over the last three years, but robots come with a guaranteed life of 10 years," a smiling Xinlu chairman said.​

Encouraged by government subsidies, businesses in the area are all buying robots, he said. Xinlu used to produce sponges for China, but the company now does business with customers abroad such as in the U.S., racking up $30 million in sales in 2016. Robots have enhanced product quality, and orders are growing around 20% a year.

Doing jobs nobody wants

Chinese companies must deal not only with higher wages, but also a workforce that started declining in 2012. Their need to save on labor sparked a surge in demand for robots. Beijing in 2015 introduced the Made in China 2025 initiative, designating robots as a key field. The government apparently worries that maintaining labor-intensive industry would threaten China's reputation as the world's factory.

The nation's shifting population structure also is changing the mindset of workers. "Factory jobs look too isolated and unexciting. I don't want to work there," a 24-year-old accounting officer in Shanghai said when asked her opinion of working at a manufacturer.

"Young people in China today don't show any interest in dangerous or mundane jobs," said the head of the Chinese robot business at Swiss automation technology company ABB.​

China's youth have better education than in the past, and retaining them in the manufacturing sector requires improving both the work environment and pay.

Robot roll call

Japanese companies crank up production as automation demand soars

Japanese and European manufacturers, who control more than half of the Chinese market for industrial robots, are thrilled by this development.

"Now is the time to make investments," a Kawasaki Heavy official enthused. The Japanese company will boost output at its main Suzhou factory from 4,000 units in fiscal 2016 to 7,000 this fiscal year.
​

Nachi-Fujikoshi will open a new factory in China by next year to roughly triple its capacity there to 1,000 units a month.

Portents of weaker sales for smartphones and automobiles in China spur concerns about a slowdown in machinery tools this fall and beyond. But manufacturers agree that demand for robots likely will remain robust.

Industrial robot sales in China totaled 67,000 units in 2015, some 30% of the global market, according to the International Federation of Robotics. The organization forecasts 20% annual growth in the Chinese market between 2016 and 2019, lifting the country's share to 40%.

"New types of demand inconceivable in Japan are being created in China, such as robots for farming," an excited Nachi-Fujikoshi Corporate Officer Hideaki Hara said.​

http://asia.nikkei.com/Business/Trends/China-goes-on-shopping-spree-for-industrial-robots

 

[JSCh]

Just like the "Minions": robots sort parcels in a huge warehouse of a Chinese delivery firm
People's Daily, China
Published on Jun 26, 2017

 

[cirr]

Chinese scientists first to successfully use robots to clone pigs

2017-07-05 09:27

Global Times Editor: Li Yan

Chinese scientists have successfully cloned pigs using robots, the first time animals ever have been cloned by machines, chinanews.com reported Monday.

Two surrogate pigs gave birth to 13 healthy cloned Changbai piglets on April 26 and 29 respectively, which was the culmination of a project by Professor Zhao Xin and his team at the Institute of Robotics & Automatic Information System, Tianjin's Nankai University.

The Nankai team has conducted thousands of experiments to test their breakthrough technology. In early January 2017, 510 embryos were transferred into six female pigs, two of which became pregnant with the piglets born in April.

In the cloning process, the collection and transfer of DNA from the donor animal to the surrogates was conducted by robots, as opposed to being performed by hand.

Professor Zhao told chinanews.com that somatic cell cloning is a classic approach to species improvement. He explained that while the offspring produced with this technique are guaranteed to be of high quality, the technique has traditionally had a low success rate due to damage done to cells.

Due to robot's superior control and accuracy, they are able to do less damage to the cells in this process. Zhao said that the force of a human hand is like a hard punch to a cell while that of a robot hand is like a gentle push. At least one key indicator of successful cell cloning showed a 100 percent improvement over human-conducted cloning.

"This particular technology, if applied correctly, could be of great value in assisted fertility, species improvement, healthcare and livestock reproduction," said Professor Zhao.

http://www.ecns.cn/2017/07-05/264078.shtml

 

[Shotgunner51]

The Global Industrial Robot Market Report is available, it offers decisive insights into the overall industrial robot industry along with the market dimensions and evaluation for the duration 2017 to 2022. Other than the Big Four (one is owned by Chinese firm), two Chinese robotics makers are included, key global players are:

• FANUC (Japan)
• Yaskawa (Japan)
• ABB (Switzerland)
  
• KUKA (Germany; subsidiary of Guangdong Midea Group)
• OTC (Japan)
• Panasonic (Japan)
• Kawasaki (Japan)
• Comau (Italy)
• Shenyang Siasun (China)
• GSK CNC (China)

Global Industrial Robot Market 2017 - Kawasaki, ABB, Panasonic, FANUC, Yaskawa, KUKA, OTC, Comau
07-05-2017 12:00 PM CET
http://www.openpr.com/news/608739/G...B-Panasonic-FANUC-Yaskawa-KUKA-OTC-Comau.html