New robots debut at CIIF, showcasing Chinese technological advancements

A new lineup of robots made their global debut at the China International Industry Fair (CIIF) in Shanghai, showcasing enhanced intelligence, automation capabilities, and specialized features tailored for the Chinese market.

China, the world’s leading market for industrial robots, has seen rapid growth in robotics technology, which is widely used in manufacturing, automotive, and electronics sectors. The CIIF event highlights the nation’s cutting-edge technological advancements and the latest innovations in the field, Shanghai Daily learned onsite.

ABB’s Ultra Accuracy feature for the GoFa cobot (collaborative robot) family made its global debut in the Shanghai fair. The new tech, ten times more accurate than other cobots on the market, enhance precision in applications requiring highly accurate path performance, including the electronics, automotive, aerospace, and metal fabrication industries.

“AI, as a crucial driver for robotics development, is shaping a new era of industrial automation, enabling unprecedented possibilities across all industries,” Marc Segura, president of ABB Robotics Division, said.

More than 350 robot brands were at the CIIF show, including the “top four” industrial robot makers worldwide including ABB and Kuka. They will bring 132 global debuts of robots, 87 Asia debuts and 128 domestic debuts at CIIF, held in Shanghai from Tuesday and Saturday.

Chinese firms also showed their tech muscles with a lot of new releases, including heavyweight load robots, embodied intelligent features making robots learn and parallel robots for flexible and complicated work.

Shanghai-based JAKA released its MAX 40 at CIIF as a Hercules robot, which can hold products up to 40 kilograms. This is a significant improvement over the industry standard of 20 kilograms. The MAX 40 also boasts a working radius of 1.8 meters and a positioning accuracy of 0.05 millimeters, as fine as a hair.

“It’s a breakthrough for technological bottleneck in modularization and lightweighting of robots, with innovation on communication, precision of robot operation and energy conversion rate,” said Li Shunchong, JAKA’s research director.

JAKA’s 1.8-meter humanoid robot, the K-1, also made its debut at the fair.

Shanghai-based Flexiv released its new adaptive parallel robot, Moonlight, which has started mass production and sales. It integrates advanced force sensing and control technology, enabling real-time force feedback and superior anti-interference ability during operation.

The Moonlight, and a new system Elements 3, has proved its value in the automotive manufacture industry. It can also be used in consumer electronics, new energy, biochemical laboratories and other industry innovation solutions.

Starup Micro Intelligence and robot maker Agilebot are showing a new kind of robot with embodied intelligence, making robots have the abililty to learn and deal with complicated tasks.

With computer vision and other AI tech, Micro Intelligence’s TRON can go beyond the traditional limitations of relying solely on programming to complete duplicated tasks. It can work with real-time perception and adaptation to the environment, learn and optimize decision-making, and efficiently and autonomously complete tasks.

Currently, China-developed robots and systems have been widely used in consumer electronics, automotive, integrated circuit and metal processing sectors, including some of the Apple supply chains, experts said.