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1st LD: Conference opens in Beijing as China embraces robotics revolution

Xinhua, November 23, 2015 Adjust font size:

They can help with the housework and even kick around a football, but robots aren't coming for your jobs just yet.

That was the reassurance from robot experts gathered at an international conference that kicked off in Beijing on Monday. The three-day event includes a forum, an exhibition and a robot contest for youth.

Decades after the first working robot was invented in 1961, "we are now in a new era of robotics," said Arturo Baroncelli, president of the International Federation of Robotics (IFR).

According to Baroncelli's estimation, some 1.5 million robots are in use in factories worldwide, with the total number poised to reach 2.3 million in the next three years.

Most robots are designed to replace workers in especially hard conditions and won't reduce job opportunities or threaten employment, according to Xu Xiaolan, vice president of the Chinese Institute of Electronics.

In a congratulatory letter, Chinese President Xi Jinping said China is willing to cooperate with other nations in promoting robotics research and development.

Premier Li Keqiang said the conference is important for promoting robot technology as China promotes innovation-driven development and entrepreneurship to transform the country from the "world's factory" to a technological powerhouse.

"The conference will spur the growth of the emerging robot industry and create the world's largest robot market," Li said.

China has already formed an ever expanding market for domestic robots.

During this year's Single's Day shopping spree on Nov. 11, well-known Chinese robot company Ecovacs sold more than 100,000 vacuum-cleaning robots online with turnover of 315 million yuan (60 million U.S. dollars)

As the supply of cheap labor dries up, Chinese manufacturers are gradually replacing manual labor with robots.

According to the IFR, a total of 57,000 industrial robots were sold in China last year, a year-on-year increase of 55 percent, and a quarter of global sales.

From 2009 to 2014, sales of industrial robots in China increased by 58.9 percent per year, said Wang Jianyu, head of the equipment department with the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology (MIIT).

According to Wang, China will need 150,000 industrial robots annually during the next five years, with the total number in the Chinese market rising to 800,000.

But China still has a far lower ratio of robots to workers than other major economies -- just 36 per 10,000 manufacturing workers, versus 478 in the Republic of Korea, 315 in Japan, 292 in Germany and 164 in the United States.

The conference has drawn more than 100 experts, 12 international robotics organizations and over 120 robotics companies. The event was organized by the China Association for Science and Technology and the MIIT. Endit