Smart Manufacturing Development Trend

Smart Manufacturing Development Trend

Key words: Intelligent Manufacturing, Intelligent Manufacturing, Industrial robot

关键词：智能制造，智能机器人， 工业机器人

Smart manufacturing has become a new trend in global manufacturing. As a key technology for smart manufacturing, robotics has a broad market prospect and is favored by the capital market. Today, robots are widely used in the automotive industry, electronics manufacturing, metal processing, chemicals, plastics, and food processing industries, and are rapidly expanding into other areas.

From the perspective of the status quo of industrial robot industry development, policy and market are driven by two factors, and a large amount of capital injection makes the entire robot industry develop rapidly. The current variety of industrial robots is very rich, from coordinate, multi-joint, parallel robots to mobile robots and so on. The performance and function of industrial robots have also been greatly improved, with the emergence of high-end products such as collaborative robots, dual-arm robots, and intelligent robots.

Among the world's industrial robots, ABB in Switzerland, KUKA in Germany, FANUC in Japan, and Yaskawa Electric are the most famous ones, and they are known as the four giants of industrial robots

In the past, many people believed that robots only replaced people in manual labor. However, with the development of artificial intelligence technology, robots have become more and more intelligent. Robots can expand knowledge maps through machine learning and use artificial intelligence algorithms to handle more complex events. . The only work that can only be accomplished by intelligence, and artificial intelligence robots will be able to complete in the future.

In the era of Industry 4.0, the small batch customization model has become a trend, and the production environment will become more and more complex. There may be different specifications of products in the same production line. Therefore, the industrial robot is required to be flexible, and the pre-judgment analysis of the production environment is conducted before the work, and then the matching work instructions are targetedly executed. For example, in the process of logistics and transportation, mobile robots need to analyze where to receive the next shipment and to which station they should be transported to. If they encounter obstacles on the road, they must know how to avoid them in time and prevent collision accidents. Especially in some high-end manufacturing industries, once the damage of expensive products in the transportation process will bring huge losses to the company, intelligent robots are an important trend for future smart manufacturing.

This shows that smart manufacturing requires more intelligent robots, and artificial intelligence will be a trend for the development of robots in the future. At this stage, robot manufacturers are improving the level of robots through various technologies, such as machine vision and sensors, to enhance the capabilities of industrial robots.

Intelligent robots are the inevitable result of the fourth industrial revolution and the development of artificial intelligence in the future. In the field of traditional industrial automation, intelligent robots will make important contributions to creating unmanned workshops, and intelligent robots can learn common problems in production and obstacles, after the accumulation of big data, independently plan more reasonable and safe working paths and operating methods, and upload effective results to the server, providing researchers with first-hand data and solutions. In the next 5-10 years, intelligent robots will play an important role in the following industries.

1.         Customer service and reception industry

Intelligent robots have a powerful ability to store, analyze data and can learn deeply. In industries such as telephone service and front desk reception, based on big data storage, in the face of customer questions, intelligent robots can search databases and fuzzy reasoning in a very short period of time to quickly solve customer problems or handle related businesses. Therefore, it can save a lot of labor and reduce the operating costs of the company.

2.         Security monitoring industry

The intelligent robot has the ability to work 24 hours a day. In the security monitoring industry, especially in the night work environment, the work of the intelligent robot relies on the sensor's perception of external physical factors, it will have no fatigue, and it will not be subject to the eyes and ears. With the limitations of the sense organs, robots have fewer flaws and work quality is more reliable than humanity.

3.         Logistics and transportation industry

At present, many e-commerce and logistics industries have mainly developed unmanned intelligent delivery vehicles that can identify pedestrians, autonomous obstacle avoidance, networking, contact consignees, and complete delivery successfully. In the future, the logistics transportation and express delivery industry will use a large number of intelligent robots instead of human resources.

4.         Education and training industry

The promotion of the education industry is the basic guarantee for scientific research innovation and scientific and technological progress. At present, for robot education and training in colleges and universities, teaching robots or other small robots are basically used to learn basic mechanical structures and write basic program codes, and the levels are relatively low. Intelligent robot products can give priority to the education market in colleges and universities, and use the latest technology and products to cultivate students. At the same time, educational output will promote the continuous improvement of intelligent robots.

Driven by policies, markets, and capital, the smart manufacturing industry is accelerating. Various advanced IT technologies are deeply integrated and developed. Industrial robots will be upgraded from automation equipment to intelligent robots. The development of artificial intelligence will also bring more opportunities for robots. Robots that join AI algorithms will become smarter. They can not only perform physical actions but also be capable of intellectual work, such as adjusting production plans according to market demand. Realize master self production and so on.