A plant capable of producing more than 10,000 industrial humanoid robots a year — one every 10 minutes — has begun operating in China, the first of its kind in the world. The facility makes heavy use of humanoid robots and driverless vehicles to create an environment in which robots build robots.
Chinese humanoid robot developer UBTECH said on the 13th that it had started operations at a smart manufacturing plant for humanoid robots in Liuzhou, in China's Guangxi Zhuang Autonomous Region, with annual capacity of 10,000 units, according to a report on the 15th by Global Times, the Chinese state-run English-language newspaper.
The plant mainly produces UBTECH's Walker S and Cruzr robot series. Siemens Digital Industries Software also took part in building the smart factory.
The facility covers 14,000 square meters and stands 13.8 meters tall, with robots serving as both the products and the tools of production. On the production floor, smart industrial humanoid robots such as the Cruzr Y1 and Cruzr S2 handle unloading, stacking, loading and transport of materials. The final assembly stage uses collaborative robots that operate in step with human movement and needs, along with remote manipulators, automated guided vehicles (AGVs) and 360-degree rotating workbenches, allowing precise assembly from multiple angles in a single position. In quality inspection, each finished robot undergoes more than four hours of full-unit testing and must pass through an automotive-grade inspection tunnel for 360-degree exterior screening with no blind spots.
The company also independently developed what it says is the industry's first fully automated three-dimensional warehouse, holding 112 robots in 65 square meters. That raises space utilization by more than 50% for the same floor area. Smart logistics made up of automated guided vehicles, unmanned forklifts and freight vehicles support the annual capacity of 10,000 units.
"Know-How Built Over 10 to 20 Years... Chinese Robots Already World's First Tier"
By realizing a manufacturing model in which robots build robots, the plant has moved beyond small-batch and pilot production of humanoid robots into a new stage of large-scale smart manufacturing, the company said. UBTECH pointed to China's robust component supply chain as the reason it was able to build a large humanoid production line. Fang Jianxin, a UBTECH vice president, said in a recent interview with Global Times that "Chinese robots have already entered the global first tier. This foundation is rooted in the many engineers, scientists and application scenarios China has accumulated over the past 10 to 20 years, which has formed a very strong supply chain base, manufacturing capability and research and development capacity. In industrial applications, China also stands at the forefront because it has the richest range of scenarios." The vice president added that "mass production cannot be separated from the support of China's supply chain," stressing that "without China's supply chain, mass-producing complex components would be extremely difficult unless you completely gave up your cost advantage."
China's output of industrial robots is rising sharply. According to the National Bureau of Statistics of China, output reached 98,677 units in July, up 30.2% from a year earlier. Production from January through July totaled 635,056 units, up 28.5% year-on-year.
Beyond production, the buildout of data infrastructure for training robots is also accelerating. Global Times reported that RoboMIND, an open-source dataset released last December by the Beijing Innovation Center for Humanoid Robotics, had surpassed 20 million cumulative downloads worldwide as of the 2nd. RoboMIND includes more than 300,000 motion trajectories of robots manipulating objects with both arms and data from more than 700 tasks performed in real-world settings.
The Beijing center also runs a large training facility of about 6,000 square meters for this purpose. It reproduces more than 30 real-world environments, including homes, retail stores, industrial sites and medical settings, and collects data using more than 150 robots and 40 robot configurations. The center said it has supplied about 30,000 hours of high-quality data to outside companies and research institutions so far.
