Companies
New rules boost robot production
China will publish standards to regulate its burgeoning robot industry while pushing for wider robotic applications in key industries, according to officials and experts.
The Ministry of Industry and Information Technology will work out standards for the industry that will cover such aspects as product quality, research and development capabilities, staff qualifications, sales practices and social responsibility, said Sun Feng, deputy director of the ministry’s Equipment Industry Department, at the 2016 China Robot Industry Conference on Wednesday.
The move is intended to raise the core competitive strength of China’s industrial robot manufacturing, he said.
Sun said that the ministry will also launch pilot projects for service robots and accelerate the setting of additional standards for the healthy and sustainable growth of the Chinese robot industry.
Xu Quanping, an expert from the State Standardization Administration, said about 30 national standards will be worked out by 2018, and twice that number will be available by 2020.
On Wednesday, the nongovernmental China Robot Industry Alliance released three general technical standards on welding robots, robots made to fill containers, and cables used on robots.
Alliance executives said 14 additional standards will also be released soon. The group has some 300 members.
More than 64,000 industrial robots, including both Chinese and foreign brands, were produced in China in the first 11 months of 2016, compared with 32,996 for the entire year in 2015. The full year’s production for 2016 is expected to surpass 70,000 units, experts said.
However, Sun said China’s robot industry has been hamstrung by dependence on high-end imports, innovation that has yet to catch up, unorganized and inadequate technical development, and lack of production certifications.
Guo Xuan, deputy director of Beijing-based Yizhuang Smart Robotics Industry Research Institute, said automation thrives amid…
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