Jieka starts IPO, how can collaborative robots seize the beach of intelligent manufacturing?

On December 19, 2022, Jieka Robot signed a listing counseling agreement with Guotai Junan Securities to officially launch the IPO process. At the same time, Hikvision's subsidiary Hikvision Robotics has finally been finalized and will be listed on the Growth Enterprise Market of the Shenzhen Stock Exchange.

This has undoubtedly brought a wave to the robot industry that has been silent for several months, and domestic intelligent robots may gradually usher in the first wave of listing.

Previously, the 78 robot concept companies that have been listed on the A-share market are mainly concentrated in the traditional industrial robot ontology manufacturing, core components and machine vision and other subdivisions, and it is rare to see intelligent robots.

In recent years, under the influence of new technologies such as AI, cloud computing and autonomous driving, intelligent robots represented by mobile robots, service robots and collaborative robots have appeared one after another, becoming hot investment targets.

Among them, the performance of collaborative robots in the capital market this year is even more eye-catching. According to incomplete statistics from GGII (Advanced Industry Research Institute), from 2015 to 2021, there were a total of 58 financing cases in the domestic collaborative robot market, and in the first half of 2022 alone, the total financing in the field of domestic collaborative robots was close to 4 billion yuan, involving AUBO, Aelite, Luoshi, Feixi and other companies, and the D round of financing of up to 1 billion yuan in July was pushed to the forefront of collaborative robots.

According to the "2022 Blue Book on the Development of Collaborative Robot Industry" released by the Advanced Industry Research Institute, in 2021, China's collaborative robot sales accounted for 51.02% of the overall sales volume of the global collaborative robot market. Behind the continuous growth rate of the collaborative robot market is the change in both the supply side and the demand side.

In the process of continuous transformation of industrial production methods to flexibility, intelligence and customization, it is difficult for traditional industrial robots to adapt to personalized production needs, and more flexible collaborative robots have emerged.

On the supply side, in addition to the significant improvement in the perception, decision-making and execution capabilities of collaborative robots, prices are also falling to a range that the market can accept. Previously, at the World Robot Conference, some collaborative robot manufacturers revealed to Light Cone Intelligence that at present, the ROI of collaborative robots is about 6 months to 1 year, which meets the psychological expectations of most customers. In the future, this indicator will continue to shorten as costs fall further.

Under the continuous collision of market demand and supply, the market for collaborative robots is about to explode.

01 The times make heroes

In the wave of intelligent manufacturing, a number of emerging unicorns will be born, and collaborative robots are one.

Compared with traditional industrial robots with a history of several decades, collaborative robots are a rising star. As early as 2008, at that time, UR Universal Robots had launched the world's first collaborative robot UR5, but the penetration rate has not been high, from its establishment in 2007 to 2016, its shipments have only maintained thousands of units in 8 years.

The reason is that collaborative robots are still human-machine integration in nature, and the pursuit of safety directly leads to the shortcomings of collaborative robots in terms of load, speed and accuracy. It is understood that the working speed of collaborative robots at that time was only about 50% of that of traditional industrial robots. Therefore, compared with traditional industrial robots, it is difficult for collaborative robots to achieve large-scale application in fast-paced production lines.

Things changed in 2016.

At that time, coinciding with the critical period of the transformation of the domestic manufacturing industry, the traditional production mode of single large quantities in the factory was gradually replaced by the flexible production mode of small batches and customization, and the disadvantages of traditional industrial robots began to be highlighted.

Taking the 3C electronics industry as an example, if the traditional industrial robot is deployed, before the factory is built, it is necessary to reserve the fixed working position of the robot, and the robot is bound in the protective fence, and it is very troublesome to change the position. In addition, the 3C electronics industry has an increasing demand for diversified and customized production, and lightweight, flexible and safe collaborative robots are more suitable for the application scenarios of human-machine collaboration to meet more production needs.

Therefore, collaborative robots have become a new growth point for industrial robots. Chang Li, vice president of Jieka Robot, once said: "From the perspective of client demand, due to the macro environment and industry changes, everyone's demand for collaborative robots has changed from the original wait-and-see to real demand. ”

In essence, the underlying logic of the development of collaborative robots is the process of continuous change of industrial production methods to flexibility, and the times create heroes, although it is only a short decade, but the strong rise of collaborative robots is also a trend.

In addition, behind the changes on the demand side, there is also a comprehensive consideration between labor costs and operational efficiency. GGII data shows that the average price of collaborative robots in China in 2021 is 109,500 yuan/unit, and we assume that the working life of a collaborative robot is 6 years (12 hours a day, all year round), and roughly calculated, the unit hour cost of collaborative robots is only 4.17/h, while the labor cost has risen to 32.33/h as early as 2019. Previously, at the World Robot Conference, there were also relevant collaborative robot manufacturers who revealed to Light Cone Intelligence that at present, the ROI of collaborative robots is about 6 months to 1 year, which has met the psychological expectations of most customers.

Obviously, the price and payback cycle of collaborative robots have come to the critical point of the industry, and in the critical period of market introduction, the continuous decline in prices will further open up the market space of collaborative robots.

On the other hand, the price of traditional industrial robots, taking high load capacity as an example, the price of traditional industrial robots is generally between 30-400,000 yuan, and this is only the price of the ontology, not counting the cost of deployment.

Secondly, the growth of demand for downstream terminal application scenarios such as 3C electronics and auto parts has a very obvious driving effect on collaborative robots, and market segments such as machining, new energy, and health care have also shown a year-on-year growth trend. GGII data shows that in 2021, the application of collaborative robots in the 3C electronics industry market accounted for 30.31%, a slight increase from the previous year; The application in the automobile and its parts industry market accounted for 27.20%, which is significantly higher than that in 2020.

Taking the 3C electronics industry as an example, in the early production and assembly links, due to the variety of 3C electronic products and the cumbersome assembly steps, the production environment is mostly unstructured, and the traditional industrial robots are not flexible enough and the secondary deployment cost is too high, which cannot meet the needs of rapid production change. Collaborative robots have the advantages of simple programming and rapid deployment, and can easily switch production lines according to needs to improve production efficiency.

When it comes to inspection, the main tasks of collaborative robots include chip inspection, PCB inspection, and computer processor inspection. By installing a vision system solution on the end effector, the cobot can mark the unqualified products and upload them to the human for processing, automating product positioning, yield inspection and appearance inspection, while effectively improving the yield rate of product inspection. For example, in the application case of the Jieka robot in the dispensing and detection of headphones, the robot can complete the dispensing operation of high-precision headphones through visual photo positioning, and the product can also be photographed and detected after dispensing, reducing the possibility of manual missed detection.

At present, in the fields of automobile manufacturing and 3C electronics, domestic collaborative robot manufacturers such as Elite Robot and ROKASHI Robot have layouts.

It is worth mentioning that in addition to factories, cobots at this stage have also opened up a new long-tail market, covering multiple application scenarios such as new retail, medical care and education.

02 Looking for differentiation, how to "people have me"?

Collaborative robots were first born in Europe, and it was not until around 2015 that they gradually emerged in China.

Compared with grabbing food on the territory of giants such as the four major families of industrial robots, for most start-ups, collaborative robots with only a dozen years of development history are an excellent opportunity for localization to break through.

In 2014, while foreign manufacturers such as UR Universal Robots and Rethink entered the domestic market in a big way, there were already companies such as SIASUN, AUBO and Daming in the camp of domestic collaborative robots. Since then, a number of domestic collaborative robot companies such as Jieka Robot, Han's Robot, and Elite Robot have also sprung up.

At present, from the perspective of the existing market share, UR Universal Robots relies on the first-mover advantage, and the head effect is significant; Although traditional industrial robot giants such as ABB, FANUC, and SIASUN have technical precipitation, after all, collaborative robots are not the main direction, and the growth rate is relatively slow; Based on technological innovation and product differentiation, a large number of start-ups such as AUBO Robot, Elite Robot, and Jieka Robot are catching up.

Like many emerging industries, as more and more players enter the game, product homogenization has been plaguing the entire collaborative robot industry. Therefore, the core competition lies in the ability of software algorithms to understand different application scenarios.

As a general-purpose robot, one of the characteristics of the collaborative machine is that it has a wide range of application scenarios, in addition to welding and palletizing in the factory, it can also make coffee latte art. The problem is that general-purpose robots are a standardized thing, and it is not realistic to develop different cobots for each industry. Therefore, balancing standardized products and differentiated industry needs is a clear point for all collaborative robot manufacturers in product design.

For example, in order to improve the compatibility of collaborative robots in a variety of application scenarios, a large number of secondary development interfaces have been set up to facilitate users to add various operations according to the actual situation. AUBO robots with different load capacities and rich configuration options can also quickly adapt to the needs of various industry application scenarios.

Secondly, finding differentiation is also the direction of collaborative robot manufacturers.

Previously, the sales staff of a collaborative robot also told Light Cone Intelligence that the performance parameters of the hardware of the collaborative robot are similar to the products of various manufacturers, and the differentiation is mainly reflected in the software. In other words, in the field of collaborative robots, there are few "people without me", and more "people have me".

In the development of software, collaborative robots follow more of the principle of taking user needs as the core, and users' requirements for collaborative robots are nothing more than four points: multi-purpose, easy to deploy, fool-proof programming and high security. Therefore, in the process of cobot product design, R&D personnel need to consider a question: how to make it easy for everyone to get started with cobots?

Looking at the cobot products at home and abroad, whether it is the earliest UR Universal Robots, or start-ups such as Jieka Robot and AUBO Robot, they all provide users with convenient programming methods, but in terms of ease of use, domestic cobots are better.

It is understood that the collaborative robots of UR Universal Robots, Sawyer and other manufacturers still need to use robot programming languages in some complex scenarios, which increases the deployment time of robots and the workload of developers to a certain extent.

For example, the Elite CS series collaborative robot uses the wider Python language as the standard language, which lowers the threshold for engineer development; Not long ago, the robot launched the palletizing process software package, compared with graphical programming, the palletizing process package directly presents the physical equivalent model to the operator on the software interface, and the design of 0 code further simplifies the complexity of the process and reduces the miscommunication caused by the flow of personnel.

From simplified programming to de-programming, technological updates are also driving the evolution of collaborative robots in an increasingly intelligent direction. With the continuous development of artificial intelligence technology, the robot's perception, decision-making and execution capabilities have been significantly improved, and collaborative robots have entered the second half with intelligence as the keyword.
Jieka starts IPO, how can collaborative robots seize the beach of intelligent manufacturing?

Jieka starts IPO, how can collaborative robots seize the beach of intelligent manufacturing?

Jieka starts IPO, how can collaborative robots seize the beach of intelligent manufacturing?

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