Some thoughts on non-standard automation equipment
Recently, I have seen some articles about robots online, and it seems that both domestic and international experts are particularly optimistic about the robot market in China in the coming years. This is something I have always agreed with. However, rather than saying that I am optimistic about the future of China's robot market, I would say that I am optimistic about China's automation market. Considering the mainstream trend of human society in the future, it must be informationization and "interconnection". Undoubtedly, the Internet has paved the way for our future in a broad sense. How should the manufacturing industry go about informationization? I believe it starts with automation. When the manufacturing industry gradually becomes automated and informationized, it is also the real change from the so-called "transmitting value" of the Internet to "creating value". At that time, humans will be able to truly evolve from low-end laborers to intelligent beings.
However, when it comes to automation, many "experts" talk about robots, which have become the representative product of automation due to their advantages: Firstly, they are mass-produced and mature products. From non-standard to standard, robots have reached a mature state today. Non-standard standardization is a permanent trend, and only after non-standard standardization can real products be produced, which constitutes the tool capability of products widely accepted by society. Because of its stable performance and ease of implementation and imitation, production is no longer complex, and the development cycle is short. And robots are precisely such a mature product. It is based on such conditions that they have advantages such as high precision and stability.
Secondly, it occupies a small space. The widespread concept of six-axis robots indicates that robots can perform automated tasks such as transfer and assembly within a large range while occupying a small footprint. Due to this, various robots have emerged in China in the past two years, as evidenced by the number of robots and manufacturers exhibited at the Shenzhen Automation Exhibition in 2013 and 2014, which reflects the number of robot companies that have emerged in that year. However, domestic robots currently mostly remain at the stage of imitation, and many companies are using the guise of robot technology to defraud state subsidies. In terms of innovation, precision, and stability, they lag far behind well-known brands such as ABB and FANUC. Some robots can only be considered as mass-produced transfer mechanisms, nothing more.
Firstly, robots are not the entirety of automation. Especially in the development of automation in China in recent years, the replacement of many repetitive tasks with robots merely utilizes their characteristic of short development cycles, but the high cost is the bottleneck in their implementation in automation;
Secondly, I personally think that the concept of a robot needs to be corrected. Internationally, only those with intelligence and thought are considered robots, and we won't discuss such a concept. By robot, I mean a standardized organization with multiple degrees of freedom that can complete a simple task in the automation field and possesses a mature self-control system. What is a simple device? For example, automation tasks are nothing more than moving materials around, and then completing processing, installation, inspection, etc. Does all automation involve material transfer and movement? It seems so, right? If there is a kind of organization that can complete such tasks and has been developed to maturity, it can be widely used in most automation fields and sold as a product. I think it can be regarded as a kind of robot. If we talk about pure transfer robots, I think some designs currently seen in the market that use cam groups to complete the entire transfer action can also be regarded as good robots if developed into standardized equipment. Their advantages lie in low cost and high speed. I think there is a huge potential market in recent years;
Thirdly, robots, as sophisticated equipment, are currently utilized in automation for material transfer, handling, processing (such as welding), and inspection (where they move with inspection equipment, essentially serving as carriers). However, they seem to struggle in material sorting. While a small number of robots can sort materials using CCDs, their speed is not fast and their requirements for materials are stringent. As we all know, material sorting is a crucial and challenging aspect of automation. Many automation systems fail to achieve or fully accomplish their tasks due to difficulties in material sorting. There is a wide variety of automated material sorting equipment, with no standardization. Vibrating discs, magazines, trays, rolls, etc., are developed according to different material requirements. However, the development cycle is long and the reliability is poor. Vibrating discs, despite being developed for many years, still have drawbacks such as frequent material jams, and the materials that can be sorted well are limited. Therefore, I believe that material sorting equipment is the direction for future development in automation. Whoever dominates this field will be at the forefront of automation. Take the material tray feeding system as an example, I have seen no less than dozens of versions, which are not sophisticated, standardized, economical, or satisfactory. If they could be standardized, with different tray sizes and replacement parts, I believe they would become new robots. Unlike the transfer robots mentioned earlier, these sorting robots serve the transfer robots. It can be said that: sorting robot + transfer robot + peripheral fixtures = automation system. More boldly, if someone could develop an "all-purpose sorter" like SMT, which completes the sorting of all shapes of materials through CCDs and high-speed transfer systems (theoretically feasible), it would be a super robot, making the automation field invincible.
Fourthly, I personally believe that the future of humanity will definitely transcend geographical boundaries. The Internet represents the trend of development for the entire human society. The manufacturing industry must leverage the "cloud design" on the internet to achieve informatization manufacturing and manifest as offline automation manufacturing. The development of China's vast informatization and automation manufacturing system requires "networking"! Non-standard automation is also perfectly suited to networking for several reasons: Firstly, non-standard development carries risks, and neither developers nor customers are willing to bear the risks. Disputes often arise, and a third-party online platform can effectively address this issue, which is beneficial for technology research and non-standard development. Secondly, the various designs in the non-standard automation field are diverse and peculiar. Through the internet, information sharing can be achieved, allowing for better and faster search for mature solutions. Moreover, "cloud design" also provides an excellent brainstorming environment for non-standard design and development, making it an indispensable channel for non-standard automation development. Thirdly, various non-standard designs, after being informatized through the internet, are easier to quickly standardize, thereby shortening the transformation cycle from non-standard to standardized products, rapidly forming mature practices in the industry, and giving birth to many new so-called "products". Based on the above, I personally believe that developing a non-standard automation design B2B platform similar to but different from Alibaba holds great potential.
