At present, the common positioning and navigation technology of industrial robots can be divided into traditional positioning and navigation technology and emerging positioning and navigation technology. Among them, electromagnetic navigation, tape navigation, QR code navigation, inertial navigation and laser reflector belong to traditional positioning and navigation technologies. This kind of technology can only be operated after the environment is modified and corresponding guides or markers are added for adaptation. Laser SLAM, visual SLAM, multisensor fusion SLAM and other emerging technical solutions with the help of SLAM technology do not need to change the environment for mapping and positioning, and the adaptation is more simple, flexible, efficient, and more accurate and stable, which further drives the wide application of industrial robots such as AMR.
Magnetic stripe navigation and QR code navigation are characterized by high maintenance cost and relatively poor flexibility due to fixed routes. Compared with laser SLAM, the technology maturity of visual SLAM is relatively poor, and the dependence on light is relatively high, and the large amount of algorithm is also a difficulty in the industry.
Today, many photovoltaic silicon cell manufacturers have AMR landing cases of laser SLAM navigation, such as Longji, Tongwei, Trina Solar and other leading enterprises. When new equipment is introduced, it is explicitly required to use AMR. The lithium battery industry's demand for AMR is leading the industry's development. The AMR related equipment procurement amount announced by a leading enterprise in 2021 is up to about 700 million yuan.
Although, the traditional magnetic stripe navigation and two-dimensional code navigation are widely used by virtue of their cost-effective advantages. However, integrated navigation accuracy, investment cost, flexibility, application scenarios and other factors, the integration and development of navigation technology will become the future trend.
At present, laser SLAM+visual SLAM and QR code navigation+laser SLAM are common matching methods in the market. This scheme can control the cost within a certain range and better ensure the accuracy of the logistics robot. This integrated navigation mode will become the main application technology direction of logistics robot technology in recent years. For example, the successful combination of laser SLAM and visual SLAM technology has been widely used in the field of unmanned forklift.
In the Ten Typical Application Scenarios of "5G+Industrial Internet" released by the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology in May 2021, it is clearly pointed out that smart sensors are closely related to flexible production and manufacturing, intelligent logistics in the factory, unmanned intelligent inspection and production site monitoring. With the help of intelligent sensors, more demands for man-machine cooperation and flexible logistics are met.
"Machine replace men" is the choice of most machinery manufacturing plants under Industry 4.0. To improve the core competitiveness of China's industrial robots to the world, in addition to occupying the market through cost performance advantages in the early stage, mastering the key technologies of core components such as intelligent sensors is the key to improving the bargaining power and gross profit rate of industrial robots in the global market. Only by mastering the core technologies to achieve autonomy and controllability, can new industries, new models and new formats be nurtured.