Recently, the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology, the Ministry of Education, the Ministry of Public Security and other 17 departments jointly released the “Robot+” Application Action Implementation Plan, putting forward the development goals of robots in the manufacturing industry in 2025 and the top ten application scenarios of robots. The industry believes that the release of this policy means the arrival of the era of “robot+”, robots will be applied in a wider range, and manufacturing robots will usher in huge development opportunities.
With the development of robot technology, the application field of robots is becoming wider and wider, and the market is also developing accordingly. The China Electronics Society predicts that the global robot market will reach US $51.3 billion in 2022, with an average annual growth rate of 14% from 2017 to 2022. According to the research report of Boston Consulting, the global robot market size is expected to grow nearly 10 times in the next 10 years, and the global robot market size will reach 160 billion to 260 billion dollars by 2030.
01
The Takeoff of the Robot Market
The “Robot+” Application Action Implementation Plan includes ten key areas of application, which are manufacturing, agriculture, construction, energy, commerce and logistics in the field of economic development, medical health, elderly care services, education, commercial community services, safety emergency and extreme environmental applications in the field of social and livelihood.
In the field of industrial machinery, the robot industry market grew strongly. The manufacturing industry is the first robot application field mentioned in the plan released this time. Due to the shortage of labor supply and rising costs caused by the shrinking of labor force and aging population in many countries, it is more urgent than ever to improve the efficiency and automation of processes. Therefore, in the manufacturing industry and other workplaces, the use of multi-axis robots capable of performing various operations and transportation tasks is rapidly expanding. By promoting the construction of intelligent manufacturing demonstration plants and developing intelligent manufacturing systems based on industrial robots, the digital transformation and intelligent transformation of manufacturing industry will be accelerated.
In addition to industrial robots, the three-year epidemic has also made the service robot market take shape. The anti-epidemic robot series has become a new force for epidemic prevention and control, and the “contactless” unmanned distribution has become a new focus. It is estimated that the global service robot market will reach US $21.7 billion in 2022. In 2024, the global service robot market is expected to grow to $29 billion.
Whether industrial robots or service robots, these robots are combining information technology to improve their perception, computing and execution capabilities. While the level of robot intelligence is improving, the demand for chips is also increasing. So which chip products are expected to benefit?
02
Which chips does the robot carry?
FPGA chip
FPGA chips have the advantages of high speed, parallelism, extremely rich computing and pin resources, flexible functions, direct hardware implementation algorithm, simple and efficient access mechanism of operands, and direct exploration of hardware bottom by means of development and debugging. It is a common practice in the industry to apply FPGA in servo driver. FPGA is stronger than CPU in executing image processing algorithm and is the best solution; When implementing AI algorithms, FPGA is the mainstream solution parallel to GPU, and has great advantages in power consumption. Compared with ASIC development, in addition to shortening the development and verification cycle, the use of FPGA also means that the logic can be changed quickly in case of problems, or the functional requirements can be modified or enhanced when necessary.
The characteristics of FPGA chip can improve servo control performance and reduce power consumption; In addition, FPGA chips can promote circuit miniaturization and reduce power consumption by providing a variety of hardware IPs, including PCI Express, to achieve peripheral logic integration while ensuring the reliability of bus connection. The reduction of power consumption means that fanless enclosures can be used, which eliminates the need for easily worn mechanical parts and avoids the inhalation of dust.
Due to the long supply time of robots, especially robot products in the industrial field, it is necessary to extend the equipment supply period for the consideration of maintenance, because the service life of industrial equipment is usually up to 10 years or more. The extended product life cycle of FPGA can meet the needs of customers in the industrial field.
MCU chip
MCU is a widely used choice in the robot execution layer. As the core control device of industrial robots, MCU will also benefit from the rapid growth of the robot market. In a single robot arm of an industrial robot, an average of eight built-in controllers become MCU chips.
For MCU in robot application direction, in addition to providing embedded platforms and design tools that are easy to develop, it is also very important to establish a perfect communication environment around MCU to handle various industrial communication protocols such as USB, SPI, etc. Compared with traditional industrial robots, humanoid robots have more complex motion patterns, and need high-precision control of the position, direction, speed and torque of the motor. MCU can perform complex and high-speed operations required by motor control. At present, robot solutions include single-motor platform (one MCU controls one motor) and dual-motor platform (one MCU controls two motors). The sum of the two motor powers of the dual-motor platform is less than the maximum power of the single motor.
In the future, the MCU designed under more advanced technology will adopt a higher performance core, its performance will be greatly improved, and the market demand will be rapidly improved. Under the background of the global MCU market cake growing year by year and the replacement of domestic MCU, domestic MCU manufacturers are expected to break through the foreign monopoly.
DSP chip
DSP (Digital Signal Processing) refers to digital signal processing technology, and a DSP chip refers to a chip capable of implementing digital signal processing technology. The interior of the DSP chip adopts the Harvard structure of separating program and data, has a special hardware multiplier, widely uses pipeline operation, and provides special DSP instructions, which can be used to quickly implement various digital signal processing algorithms.
Since its birth, DSP chips have developed rapidly, benefiting from both the development of integrated circuits and the huge market. In just a few decades, DSP chips have been widely used in many fields such as communication, radar, image, military, instrument, automation, signal processing, etc.https://www.slw-ele.com/
DSP chips are used in the field of industrial robots, equivalent to playing a joint role. With the control of DSP, the robot reacts more quickly and moves more accurately. Industrial robots need to process a large amount of data in their work. With the increasingly widespread and widespread application of industrial robots, DSP chips are increasingly used in this area, and their importance, economy, and practicality will be reflected.
IGBT chip
The traditional industrial control and power supply industries are the cornerstone of the steady development of the IGBT market. Industrial control is the largest application field of IGBT, with steady growth in demand. With the deepening of industrial automation, widely deployed industrial robots and intelligent machine tools rely on powerful and flexible AC motors, servo motors and energy-saving frequency converters and power supply devices.
IGBT power semiconductor device is the core device in the application field of power electronics. With electric energy as the processing object, power electronic technology is used to rectify, stabilize, switch and convert electric energy to achieve high efficiency and high quality conversion. Power semiconductors are the core components of power electronic conversion devices. They play an irreplaceable key role in the application fields of high power, high current, high frequency and low noise, and are widely used in industrial control fields.
In recent years, China’s inverter and welding machine market has grown steadily, the industrial robot market has accelerated development, and the corresponding industrial control IGBT market will also grow steadily. According to Jibang Consulting data, the global industrial control IGBT market size in 2020 is about 14 billion yuan, of which China’s industrial control IGBT market size is about 5.3 billion yuan. It is expected that the global industrial control IGBT market size will reach 17 billion yuan by 2025.
03
The field of robot chip is still the home of foreign enterprises
From 2020 to 2021, the global FPGA market will grow at a rate of 16%. It is expected that it will continue to maintain a good growth momentum (about 12% to 15% CAGR) in the next five years. The main FPGA suppliers include Intel and Celesys. Intel has provided solutions for a variety of application scenarios by providing processors and FPGA, carrying OpenVINO tool suite and oneAPI; Selingx also has a mature platform for robots, both of which are leading in the field of robots.
Traditional MCU manufacturers also have a deep accumulation in the field of robotics. TI provides a complete set of robot solutions, while Resa, Enzip, Microchip, Italian French Semiconductor, Infineon, etc. also provide a variety of options. These enterprises can provide more components for robot enterprises, not limited to the main control chip.
The major manufacturers of DSP in the world are Texas Instruments, ADI, NXP, Jell Systems, among which Texas Instruments accounts for the highest proportion. Domestically, the products of European and American manufacturers still account for the main market. Domestic enterprises with DSP products include 38 CETC, Hunan Jinxin, Jiangsu Hongyun Technology, Shenzhen Chuangcheng Microelectronics, Beijing Zhongke Haoxin Technology, etc.
In addition, CPU is also the main chip in the field of industrial control. With the development of robots, it is necessary to realize control, grab point analysis, visual object recognition and so on in more and more environments. These are all computationally intensive, and only one FPGA is not enough. In the field of CPU products, Intel has accumulated a lot of experience. In recent years, some domestic and some brands have entered. The embedded CPU products of Guoxin Technology can be widely used in the field of industrial control.
With the increasing application of 5G, AI and other technologies in the field of robotics, more and more chip players will be welcomed in the field of robotics. Qualcomm, which has made steady progress in the main AI chip market, also released the RB6 robot platform, demonstrating the strong strength of robots under the support of 5G and AI.
04
epilogue
In December 2022, the output of industrial robots from industrial enterprises above designated size nationwide was 40000 sets. From January to December 2022, the total output of industrial robots of industrial enterprises above designated size in the country was 443000 sets. In December 2022, the output of service robots of industrial enterprises above designated size nationwide will be 491000 sets. From January to December 2022, the total output of service robots of industrial enterprises above designated size in China will be 6.458 million sets.
The robot industry has no chance to overtake at corners. To achieve high-quality development of the hard technology industry, only by down-to-earth research and development and persistent investment can we win the battle for key core technologies. From this point of view, the robot industry and the semiconductor industry are similar, and both need to be calm and calm.
At the arrival of the era of robot+, we sincerely hope that more domestic chip manufacturers can grasp the trend and stand on the forefront.
The era of “robot+” opens, driving the next wave of chip tide?
