协作机器人走近日常生活 - 2017年11月15日

FOR decades, industrial robots have been fenced off from humans to avoid accidents. Now they are increasingly working side-by-side with people, freeing them from dull and repetitive tasks.

Sales of these “collaborative” robots (cobots) jumped almost 75 percent a year between 2014 and last year, and are expected to hit 7.9 billion yuan (US$1.2 billion) in China by 2020.

The figures were outlined in a report on the sector’s potential — the “2017 Blue Paper on the Cobots Industry”, released at the just-ended China International Industry Fair in Shanghai.