According to data from the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology, in the first half of this year, the added value of China’s equipment manufacturing industry increased by 10.2% year-on-year, contributing 3.4 percentage points to the growth of all above-scale industries, fully playing the role of a “stabilizer” in industrial development. Among these, intelligent manufacturing equipment has shown remarkable performance. Intelligent manufacturing equipment mainly includes high-end CNC machine tools and industrial robots, additive manufacturing, intelligent sensing and control, intelligent detection and assembly, and intelligent logistics and warehousing, among other key technological equipment. Data from the China Machinery Industry Federation shows that in the first half of this year, the output of industrial robots increased by 35.6% year-on-year, the market size of intelligent sensors exceeded 160 billion yuan, and the sales of intelligent handling robots increased by 11.2% year-on-year.
“The intelligent transformation of the manufacturing industry continues to deepen, driving the vigorous development of the intelligent manufacturing equipment industry,” said Liu Qianjun, Secretary-General of the Intelligent Manufacturing Branch of the China Machinery Industry Federation. The scale of China’s intelligent manufacturing equipment industry is expected to exceed 5 trillion yuan this year.
First, let’s look at industrial robots. The robot market maintains a rapid growth momentum, and China has remained the world’s largest industrial robot market for 12 consecutive years. In the past three years, China accounted for more than half of the newly installed industrial robots globally. While the market scale continues to grow, the industry’s innovation capability is steadily improving, and China’s robot industry has formed a relatively complete industrial chain system, with significant technological progress in key technologies and components such as precision reducers, high-performance servo drive systems, intelligent controllers, and integrated intelligent joints.
In the first half of this year, China’s industrial robot export value increased by 61.5% year-on-year. Currently, China holds over 190,000 valid patents related to robots, accounting for about two-thirds of the global total.
“As the world’s largest manufacturing country, China has a complete range of industrial categories and a multi-level development of enterprises, providing huge market opportunities for domestic robot companies,” Liu Qianjun said. This year, the market size of industrial robots in China is expected to exceed 90 billion yuan, with a market share of over 43% globally.
Next, let’s look at sensors. As the “sensory nerves” of modern manufacturing, sensors play a crucial role in the machinery industry. In the first half of this year, China’s sensor market size exceeded 200 billion yuan, with the industrial automation sector accounting for the largest share, reaching over 35%.
In the field of industrial sensors, temperature sensors, pressure sensors, and flow sensors have become the main driving forces for market growth. In the first half of this year, the market size of robot vision sensors reached 4.756 billion yuan. As the industrial robot market matures, the new growth momentum for the vision sensor market mainly comes from the humanoid robot sector.
“At the same time, the rapid development of the new energy vehicle industry has injected strong momentum into the sensor market,” Liu Qianjun said. In the first half of this year, the production and sales of new energy vehicles increased by 41.4% and 40.3% year-on-year, respectively, driving the demand for products such as current sensors, angle sensors, and pressure sensors.
According to the “14th Five-Year Plan for Intelligent Manufacturing Development,” by the end of this year, 70% of large-scale manufacturing enterprises will have basically achieved digital networking, and more than 500 intelligent manufacturing demonstration factories leading the industry will be established, indicating that intelligent manufacturing equipment still has broad space for development.
Content source: People’s Daily