(Yicai) Feb. 1 -- After capturing most of the home market, Chinese manufacturers of mobile robots are aiming to take a larger share of the global market as the competitiveness of their products has entered the top echelon.

Chinese developers of robots that can move around were not too late to enter the sector after foreign firms and the high growth in domestic demand provides opportunities for them to quickly catch up, Lu Hanchen, director of the Gaogong Robotics Industry Research Institute, told Yicai. 

By way of example, Lu said Danish industry giant Mobile Industrial Robots was founded in 2013 while major Chinese producers were set up around 2015.

Mobile robots are the next step in automation, and are often used to sort goods in warehouses, clean public areas, or move items around hospitals. Two of the main categories are automated guided vehicles and autonomous mobile robots, with the former moving on a fixed path.

Chinese manufacturers have kept improving their product quality and technical capabilities through new projects in recent years, Lu said. Their sales may have reached 102,000 units last year, up 34 times on 2013, according to the institute’s data. Over 95 percent of those bought in China were made locally and China-made products may have accounted for more than half of global shipments.

Part of the reason behind their success is the early market entry. Foreign companies do not have the same technological advantages in mobile robots as they do in industrial robots in China, while at the same time, local companies can offer better services and prices, Lu said. 

Moreover, firms took different paths to refine their products in recent years, which turned out to be a win for Chinese players. They have mainly focused on improving software, while overseas companies work on enhancing hardware, said Guan Jian, marketing director at Youibot Robotics, which makes products for handling materials.

Given the relatively limited room for improvement in hardware, Chinese firms have been sharpening their competitive edge in the past decade, Guan added.

Price Advantage

China-made products also have a noticeable price advantage, said Jiang Chao, founder and chief executive officer of Syrius, a supplier of autonomous mobile robots. For example, one Japanese rival's product costs JPY10,000 (USD68) per kilogram of load capacity, while Syrius’ is less than half of that, he said.

The advantage lies in lower supply chain costs, including chip and sensor prices, as well as the optimization of software and algorithms that have lowered the requirements for hardware configuration, Guan said, adding that large-scale production has also amplified the cost advantage of Chinese products. Guan gave an example: one foreign-made robot he saw in Europe last year would have the same numbers in its price in China, but they would be for yuan, not euros.

Armed with quality and competitive pricing, Chinese mobile robots are going global. Suppliers of automated guided vehicles may have received more than 30 percent of their orders from abroad last year, according to the institute’s estimate.

Syrius' overseas revenue already accounts for over 70 percent of its total, Yicai learned. Moreover, Libiao Robotics, a provider of intelligent logistics sorting solutions, is considering building a plant in Japan, given the huge market demand, founder and CEO Xia Huiling said.

Chinese developers of mobile robots are global frontrunners in terms of competitiveness and they have already established a certain degree of dominance in Japan and South Korea, Lu noted.

Editors: Tang Shihua, Emmi Laine