The rapid development of Chinese e-commerce and the transformation and upgrading of intelligent manufacturing have provided mobile robots with rich application scenarios and broad development space. With the continuous upgrading of mobile robot technology, product forms and solutions have become increasingly diversified, and the application scenarios have continued to expand, promoting the deep development of digital and intelligent industry.
Mobile robot is the foundation of building intelligent factory
Intelligent manufacturing is not simply to use robots to replace human beings to produce products, but a complete set of systems. The first step is logistics. Mobile robots are used to transport various goods and physically connect various discrete systems. If human beings are also used to maintain the flow of goods, it is difficult to keep pace with efficiency, and it is also difficult to ensure smooth connection.
Mobile robots have obvious advantages in industrial applications. They have unique advantages in positioning and navigation, environmental awareness, system scheduling, collaborative control and other aspects. They can adapt to the dangerous, heavy and complex dynamic working environment that human beings are not competent for. They are not only not afraid of hardship, but also professional, and can better serve the intelligent production system and make it play a greater role.
For example, in semiconductor production, the wafer is a high-cost raw material, which is extremely fragile. Once there is vibration during the handling process, the wafer may be broken into defective products, and the wafer manufacturing workshop also needs dust-free treatment. Frequent manual operation is difficult to avoid pollution, so the use of mobile robots becomes the most reliable choice. Its operation is stable and easy to keep clean, effectively ensuring the yield of wafer production.
In addition, the uncertainty risk of the economic environment is increasing, so a more flexible logistics system is particularly important for enterprises. The intelligent logistics system built by the mobile robot solution can flexibly adapt to various scenarios and help enterprises respond to changes in business and product requirements in a timely manner.
With the continuous promotion of intelligent manufacturing and the gradual maturity of mobile robot technology, its flexibility, accuracy and adaptability are constantly improving, enabling mobile robots to be applied in batches in more scenarios, especially in new energy, automobile, lithium battery, photovoltaic, petrochemical, 3C and other industries.
Mobile robots will grow by 50% in the next few years
In the long run, labor scarcity, rising labor costs, e-commerce growth, and flexible manufacturing transformation will continue to drive the accelerated development of the mobile robot market. The data shows that the global mobile robot market will be about 28 billion yuan in 2022, and it is expected to exceed 100 billion yuan in 2026, with a compound annual growth rate of more than 35%.
The 2022 Mobile Robot Market Report released by the global authoritative agency Interact Analysis also shows that the mobile robot market will grow significantly in 2021, with the shipment volume increasing by more than 70%. It is expected that the shipment volume of mobile robots will continue to grow by about 50% annually in the next five years, and the industry revenue will maintain a growth of 30% - 40% annually.
In the application of mobile robots, it can be roughly divided into storage logistics robots and industrial logistics robots, among which:
The warehousing and logistics robots used in the order fulfillment scenario have strong market demand and growth momentum. In 2021, the global deployment of warehousing and logistics robots has been higher than the sum of the previous two years, and is expected to account for 73% of the total deployment of mobile robot headquarters by 2027;
For industrial logistics robots used in material handling scenarios, it is expected that by 2025, the market size of AGV (automatic guided transport vehicle) and AMR (autonomous mobile robot) will reach 11 billion dollars, and by the end of 2027, the number of robots deployed will exceed 1 million.