Data from the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology shows that in the first half of this year, the added value of China's equipment manufacturing industry increased by 10.2% year-on-year, driving the growth of all industrial enterprises above designated size by 3.4 percentage points, and fully playing the role of a "stabilizer" for industrial development. Among them, intelligent manufacturing equipment has performed outstandingly. Intelligent manufacturing equipment mainly includes key technical equipment such as high-end CNC machine tools and industrial robots, additive manufacturing, intelligent sensing and control, intelligent inspection and assembly, intelligent logistics and warehousing. Data from the China Machinery Industry Federation shows that in the first half of this year, the output of industrial robots increased by 35.6% year-on-year, the market size of intelligent sensors exceeded 160 billion yuan, and the sales volume of intelligent handling robots rose by 11.2% year-on-year.

The continuous deepening of the intelligent transformation of the manufacturing industry has driven the vigorous development of the intelligent manufacturing equipment industry. Liu Qianjun, secretary-general of the Intelligent Manufacturing Branch of the China Machinery Industry Federation, introduced that the scale of China's intelligent manufacturing equipment industry is expected to exceed 5 trillion yuan this year.

Let's first look at industrial robots. The robot market maintains a rapid growth momentum, and China has remained the world's largest industrial robot market for 12 consecutive years. In the past three years, China has accounted for more than half of the global new industrial robot installations. While the market size continues to grow, the industry's innovation capacity has steadily improved. China's robot industry has formed a relatively complete industrial chain system, and has made significant technological progress in key technologies and components such as precision reducers, high-performance servo drive systems, intelligent controllers, and intelligent integrated joints.

In the first half of this year, the export value of industrial robots in China increased by 61.5% year-on-year. At present, China holds over 190,000 valid patents related to robots, accounting for approximately two-thirds of the global total.

As the world's largest manufacturing country, China has a complete range of industrial categories and its enterprise development levels are multi-level, providing huge market opportunities for domestic robot enterprises. Liu Qianjun introduced that this year, the market size of industrial robots in China is expected to exceed 90 billion yuan, and the number of robots in use accounts for more than 43% of the global market.

Let's take a look at the sensor again. As the "sensory nerves" of modern manufacturing, sensors play a crucial role in the mechanical industry. In the first half of this year, the market size of sensors in China exceeded 200 billion yuan, among which the industrial automation sector accounted for the largest share, reaching over 35%.

In the field of industrial sensors, temperature sensors, pressure sensors and flow sensors have become the main drivers of market growth. In the first half of this year, the market size of robot vision sensors reached 4.756 billion yuan. As the industrial robot market gradually matures, the new driving force for the growth of the visual sensor market mainly comes from the field of humanoid robots.

Meanwhile, the rapid development of the new energy vehicle industry has injected strong impetus into the sensor market. Liu Qianjun said that in the first half of this year, the production and sales of new energy vehicles increased by 41.4% and 40.3% respectively year-on-year, driving the growth in demand for products such as current sensors, Angle sensors and pressure sensors.

According to the "14th Five-Year Plan for the Development of Intelligent Manufacturing", by the end of this year, 70% of large-scale manufacturing enterprises will basically achieve digitalization and networking, and more than 500 intelligent manufacturing demonstration factories leading the industry development will be built. There is still broad space for intelligent manufacturing equipment.