Written by/Chen Yiru

The global economy is facing drastic changes, and robots will play an indispensable role in production in the future. The application of robots after the epidemic will be the key to the growth of economic productivity, of which the development of "collaborative robots" is the most promising.

Since the first industrial robot was born in the United States in the 1960 s, robots have been developed for 60 years. With the aging of the environment and the phenomenon of fewer children, robots are used as a solution to fill the labor gap; and the automation and intelligent development of the manufacturing industry also make robots more flexible and flexible. In the future, how will the development of robots have a greater breakthrough? Make the public look forward.

When global factories actively catch the wave of intelligent manufacturing, robots that can be flexibly applied in many production environments have become the focus of enterprises. According to statistics from the International Federation of Robotics (IFR), from 2013 to 2018, the global number of industrial robot installations has increased by 1.37 times. It is estimated that by 2022, there will be 4 million industrial robots operating in factories worldwide. Robot density is one of the indicators of the degree of automation in a country's manufacturing industry. Taiwan ranks seventh in the world, indicating strong demand.

Miton Guerry, President of the International Federation of Robotics, said that the global economy is facing a dramatic dynamic shift due to the trade war between China and the United States and the new coronary pneumonia, and how will the industry deal with the impact? Robots will play an indispensable and important role in production in the future. He believes that the high flexibility of robots, can adapt to a variety of production environments, but also because of the outbreak brought about by the broken chain, lack of labor and non-contact business opportunities development, prompting global enterprises to speed up the evaluation of robot import, the application of robots, will become a key factor in the growth of economic productivity after the outbreak, in which he is more optimistic about the development of "collaborative robots.

Collaborative robots meet a small number of diverse production needs

Compared with industrial robots, collaborative robots (Cobots) can afford more flexible and flexible tasks, and can work with humans without fencing. Through man-machine cooperation, the gap between the full manual production line and the full automatic production line can be filled, and the rigid boundary between full automation and human labor can gradually disappear. In the same working space, humans perform highly flexible and valuable tasks, and then collaborative robots perform tasks that require fast, accurate, and repetitive work.

Since 2016, the four major robot families in the world, including KUKA, ABB, FANUC and YASKAWA, have all launched collaborative robots, and the number of global imports is also growing at a very fast rate every year. As the manufacturing industry faces a small number of diverse, flexible production, small products and other needs, factories need smaller, safer robots that can work with humans, so the future of robots will be more towards human-machine collaboration to meet current manufacturing needs.

Development of wisdom into AI behavior decision-making

How will robots evolve in the future? Zhong Hongyi, ABB's global electronics industry after-sales service and technical support manager, said that if we look at the development trend of robots, from repetitive and precise work in the past to gradually increasing sensors and AI, robots have evolved to identify items, "Robots need to develop their minds, that is, make decisions. 」

Hu Zhusheng, director of the Institute of Mechanical and Electromechanical Systems of the Industrial Research Institute, further pointed out that robots are the first industry to be introduced into AI. At present, the AI of robots is based on "identification". The future is to develop "behavior" AI so that robots can automatically respond. "So far, the behavior is still through" teaching ", but in different ways to quickly teach, how to make the robot automatically produce manufacturing behavior in the future, will be rapid progress. 」

This also means that in the future, robots will evolve into anthropomorphic perception, reasoning and decision-making capabilities, and further complete many of the technical work that is still carried out by professional manpower, with a wider range of applications, "fewer children and unmanned robots, the breadth of future robot applications will be greater, and the introduction of AI or intelligence is an inevitable trend," Hu said.

Communicating Tradition and Innovation Inspire Creative Applications

Talent cultivation is also a key indicator for the long-term and stable development of the robot industry. "Only when the next generation of talents enter in large numbers will this industry become bigger and bigger. 」 Hu Zhusheng said, but students have limited access to industrial robots, so the open source code-based robot operating system (Robot Operating System;ROS) allows more young talents to invest in robot research, but also because the safety of robots is critical, programming needs to be extremely rigorous, and many large factories still lack support for ROS.

"Although the students' solutions are not mature enough, there are many ideas. What robots need in the factory in the future is creativity. For example, Japan uses robots to do octopus burning. However, it is a dilemma to balance safety and innovation. Sometimes innovation means destruction. If we do not go to innovation and do not have a good platform to communicate innovation and tradition, the progress of this industry will be very slow, "Hu Zhusheng said.

TECHMAN ROBOT is one of the few robot manufacturers that supports ROS, Huang Shizhong, the company's chief operator, believes that even though robots already provide powerful functions in arms and brains, they still need deep breakthroughs in basic research. "Some things can be optimized into products after proof of concept (POC). For example, robots can produce new value and new industries only when they have new value."

Hu Zhusheng said that unlike the evolution of mobile communication, robots have a standard and clear direction. "There is too much room for robots to develop! It won't stop until it replaces humans. 」 At present, we can't see the marginal robot field, and obviously there are infinite imagination waiting for people to realize it. Source: Industrial Technology Research Institute