Recently, the Department of Industry and Information Technology of Anhui Province recently released the "Action Plan for the Development of Anhui Province's Humanoid Robot Industry (2024-2027)" (hereinafter referred to as the "Action Plan"), which states that by 2027, a preliminary innovation system and industrial ecology for Anhui Province's humanoid robot industry will be constructed around the "23456" target system, forming industrialization capabilities.
In today's era, humanoid robot technology is developing at an unprecedented speed, leading profound changes in industry, service industry, and even daily life. With the improvement of computing performance, advances in machine learning and control theory, and breakthroughs in new materials science, humanoid robots are gradually moving from science fiction pages to the real world, becoming an important force driving social progress.
Recently, CCTV Finance reported that humanoid robots are a representative industry with a strong sense of the future. According to an institutional report, it is expected that the scale of China's humanoid robot industry will exceed 20 billion yuan by 2026. In the current era of the explosion of generative artificial intelligence technology, humanoid robots are highly likely to achieve unexpected growth in the future.
According to a report by the China Electronics Information Industry Development Research Institute's "CCID Consulting Research", the humanoid robot industry will enter an explosive period in 2023, and functional complete machines will gradually occupy the mainstream and have huge development potential in the future. In the environment of human work and life, humanoid robots can handle complex and diverse work tasks, assisting or replacing humans in their work. Humanoid robots are expected to be the first to achieve demonstration applications in the industrial field, gradually replacing humans in special fields, and will be widely applied in the field of people's livelihood after reaching a high level of maturity.
According to a previous report by IT Home, the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology issued the "Guiding Opinions on the Innovation and Development of Humanoid Robots" in November last year, proposing that by 2025, the innovation system of humanoid robots will be preliminarily established, and breakthroughs will be made in key technologies such as "brain, cerebellum, and limbs" to ensure the safe and effective supply of core components. At the same time, the complete machine products have reached the international advanced level and achieved mass production. They have been demonstrated and applied in special, manufacturing, and livelihood services scenarios, exploring the formation of effective governance mechanisms and means.
From the perspective of effective technology patents, China has entered the forefront of competition in the field of humanoid robot technology in the world. According to publicly available data from the People's Daily Research Institute, as of May 31, 2023, China has 3110 valid patents for humanoid robots, ranking first in the world; The number of patent applications for humanoid robots is 6618, also ranking first in the world. From the perspective of institutional patent situation, among the top ten applicants with the highest number of effective patents for humanoid robots globally, China Ubisoft Technology, Data, and Tsinghua University/Beijing Institute of Technology (tied) rank first, ninth, and tenth respectively; In addition, Japan has 5 entities entering the top ten, while South Korea and the United States each have one entity entering the top ten.
Humanoid robots will continuously integrate new technologies such as artificial intelligence, machine learning, computer vision, etc., to achieve higher autonomous decision-making ability, more accurate perception ability, and more flexible motion ability. The innovation of these technologies will drive the development of humanoid robots to a higher level and expand their wider application scenarios.
Humanoid robots will gradually expand from traditional industrial fields to service areas such as healthcare, education, and home services. In the medical field, humanoid robots can assist doctors in performing surgeries, rehabilitation training, and other tasks; In the field of education, humanoid robots can serve as teaching aids to help students better understand knowledge; In the field of home services, humanoid robots can undertake tasks such as cleaning, taking care of the elderly and children. These new application scenarios will bring more market opportunities for humanoid robots.
Currently, humanoid robots have entered a period of industrial explosion. At the same time, the current industry is facing problems and challenges such as low technological and product maturity, difficulty in large-scale manufacturing and maintenance, limitations in high-value application scenarios, and difficulty in commercialization implementation.