Imagine that when you order a pizza, the robot will help you deliver it to your home; when you are shopping in a store, the robot confirms that you are a VIP and introduces you to the store’s promotional activities and leads you to the designated shelves; when traveling abroad, it is a navigation robot in airports, banks, and restaurants. Speak your native language and provide customized services; when you get home, the housework robot has cleaned up, cooked your meal, and told you the messages or audiovisual messages received during this time out. These are not imaginary talks, but have been Products in progress or testing phase.
According to the International Federation of Robotics (IFR) classification of service robots, they can be divided into household and commercial types. The household type includes sweeping robots, care, home safety, etc.; the commercial type includes farming, animal husbandry, medical care, logistics handling, navigation, etc. application. In recent years, robots have come out of the factory and have greatly improved their appearance, functions, and interactivity. In addition, the price has gradually become closer to the people. The market continues to be optimistic. IFR estimates that there will be 350 million service robots in the period from 2015 to 2018. The sales scale of approximately 1.52 million commercial service robots.
According to a survey of potential users by Japan's Softbank, the highest demand for home robots lies in the sharing of housework, which also echoes the fact that the sales volume of sweeping robots has continued to hit new highs in recent years and accounted for 70% of the proportion of household robots. With the advancement of technology and the introduction of more functions, the current sweeping robot not only has functions such as dry and wet integration, remote remote control, negative ion infrared sterilization, obstacle avoidance, automatic return to home charging, or automatic adjustment of suction according to different floor materials. Integrating video surveillance and Internet of Things applications, let the sweeping robot take the role of the hub of the smart home, and have the functions of home security and communication with other household appliances.
Another huge potential demand is the companion care robot developed in response to the aging and declining birth rate society. It has been developing rapidly in various countries. However, this product requires the support of a huge language database and artificial intelligence technology to enhance its ability to interact with people. In addition, robots The main body is only able to improve its practicability by cooperating with the self-judgment of grasping objects, supporting personnel, and the accuracy of force manipulation. As the related technology is still to be developed and the cost is expensive, it is still a long way from being popular in the family.
Compared with the introduction of ordinary households that still need time to brew, many companies are eager to try the adoption of service robots. Because in the corporate market, bilateral operators can plan the route in advance for the service field, so that the robot can move at a fixed point or according to a specific coordinate, and can input user information or voice module in advance, so that it has face recognition and simple response. Ability to complete the setting of gestures or repetitive actions at the same time, so the technical problem is relatively small. The key is that the robot industry can clearly grasp the needs of specific business groups. In addition, because robots are expensive, for example, the well-known SoftBank Pepper has an empty price of up to 198,000 yen. Therefore, the current mainstream method in the market is to reduce the purchase cost of enterprises through the leasing model, in addition to bringing topicality and task sharing to stores, And to reduce the high maintenance and warranty costs, it can be regarded as a business model to increase market acceptance.
In the domestic service robot market, it is expected that more home appliances, consumer electronics and other fields will invest in the industry, and the competition will become more intense. In addition to having the ability to develop key robot technologies and proposing more competitive prices, AI artificial intelligence Import will play an important role. On the whole, it will take some time for robots to enter the family to interact with members, share part of the housework, and assist in the care of the elderly or children.
