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December 13, 2016

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Home » City specials » Hangzhou

The smart way forward for manufacturers

By Wu Huixin | December 13, 2016, Tuesday | Print Edition

 IMAGINE an “intelligent” robot cruis­ing around your neighborhood, scanning passers-by and reporting those not programmed into its soft­ware to the community security office.

Science fiction? No longer. Hangzhou Great Star Co has created a security robot that can give directions, recognize faces and detect smoke. It works 24/7 and doesn’t need meal breaks or take sick days.

Several of the robots are already being tested out in industrial parks, with plans to extend their use to residential commu­nities. The benefits are obvious: saving labor costs and enhancing the level of security via new technologies.

“Property developers like Greentown Group have already purchased the robots for their upscale residential com­munities,” said He Tianle, vice president of Great Star. “However, the robot still needs to lift its public profile before the market really takes off. Higher demand will lower its price.”

Great Star has turned from a main­stream industrial tool manufacturer into a producer of technological “smart” products. It plans to make robots its core business.

“China and developed countries are at the same starting line where smart manufacturing is concerned,” He told Shanghai Daily. “Machines are going to replace human labor. That is an irrevers­ible trend, especially with China’s labor force shrinking and wages rising. I be­lieve the prospects for intelligent robots are great indeed.”

The company has turned more tra­ditional automated robots used on assembly lines into intelligent versions that operate without manual controls.

“Considering daily labor costs and other maintenance expenses, automated guided vehicles are more cost-effective, even with the high price tag they carry at the mo­ment,” he said. “In time, more people will become aware of these advantages.”

Another labor-saving use of cruise ro­bots is in the power industry. Electrical substations require special inspectors to check statistics in everyday maintenance. Now, the laser navigation system of the robot can help record and transfer data to central computer instantly, especially in extreme weather.

“Robots are an invaluable assistance in mines, high-speed railways and power grids,” He said. “They have already been applied to solve more than 100 problems in the national power system. Our tech­nology, which is the most advanced in China, has resulted in sales exceeding 100 million yuan (US$14.47 million) so far.”

The company has also designed a robot for cleaning swimming pools. It runs on solar panels. Great Star is trying to promote the robot overseas, where backyard swimming pools are much more common.

Robots are a part of Hangzhou’s at­tempts to become a hub for smart manufacturing. In the first nine months of this year, the local robot industry had income of 3.75 billion yuan, up 6 percent from a year earlier.

More companies are turning their attention to the manufacture of smart products. The Otis Electric factory in Hangzhou, for example, has adopted automated production lines.

“These lines complete what was once eight hours of work in five hours,” said Dai Zheng from Otis. “The whole factory can function with only a few employ­ees because intelligent technology does most of the work.”

Both Otis and Great Star are located in the 3-square-kilometer Qiantang Smart Town, which was established last year as a hub for intelligent manufacturing in the city. Plans are to expand the zone into a major innovation center in eastern China.

“The town has many dominant ad­vantages,” said Ma Zhiqing, assistant director of the town’s management committee. “Even before it was officially established, a number of leading compa­nies and scientific organizations were based here.”

In order to attract professional talent, the town built quality apartments for workers and provides rent subsidies.

The Hangzhou municipal government last month unveiled 22 new measures to attract professionals, including 100 million yuan in subsidies for entrepre­neurs with promising projects and 5 million yuan in financial aid for employ­ment recruitment agencies.

“The Yangtze Delta Region Institute of Tsinghua University and the Univer­sity National Science Park of Zhejiang Province are situated in the town,” Ma said. “Both are attractive platforms for professional talent.”

The city introduced a 27-point guide for talent recruitment in January 2015. Since then, it has attracted 52 profes­sional experts and provided permanent residency to 20,730 experts from other parts of China. The city government also has allocated 250 million yuan in loans to business startups.

“Good governmental services and at­tractive talent recruitment policies are indispensable to the development of intelligent manufacturing,” He said.

“Hangzhou is creating a platform to do all that, which is a major reason that Great Star decided to locate its operations here.”

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