When it comes to industrial robots in the world, the four families represented by Fanuc, Kuka, ABB, and Yaskawa Electric can't be separated. In the Asian market, they are also important, and occupy more than 70% of the market share of China's robot industry. So, what are the characteristics and advantages and disadvantages of the products of the four families of robots?
The four families have their respective strengths in various technical fields. ABB's core field is control system, KUKA is system integration application and body manufacturing, Fanuc is CNC system, and Yaskawa is servo motor and motion controller.
ABB, Switzerland
ABB headquarters is located in Zurich, Switzerland. The business covers five major fields, including power products, discrete automation, motion control, process automation and low-voltage products, with power and automation technology being the most famous. ABB emphasizes the integrity of the robot itself. For its six-axis robot, the single-axis speed is not the fastest, but the accuracy of the six-axis joint operation is very high.
Core areas Core areas
The servo and motion controllers mainly produced by Yaskawa Electric are key parts of manufacturing robots. It has successively developed various kinds of automatic operation robots such as welding, assembly, spraying and handling. Its core industrial robot products include spot welding and arc welding robots, oil painting and processing robots, LCD glass plate transmission robots and semiconductor chip transmission robots, It is one of the earliest manufacturers to apply industrial robots to semiconductor production.
Technology: good stability, but slightly poor accuracy
After nearly a hundred years of inheritance of electrical motor technology, Yaskawa's market share of AC servo and frequency converter has steadily ranked first in the world. As early as 1977, Yaskawa developed Japan's first all-electric industrial robot.
Yaskawa started with the motor, so it can maximize the inertia of the motor. Therefore, the biggest characteristics of Yaskawa's robot are large load, high stability, no alarm during full load and full speed operation, and even overload operation. Therefore, Yaskawa has a relatively large market in heavy-duty robot applications, such as the automobile industry.
Compared with Fanuc's robots, the accuracy of Yaskawa's robots is not so high. On the basis of the same price, if customers require high accuracy, they often choose Fanuc's robots. However, the price advantage of Yaskawa robot is obvious. It can be said that the price of Yaskawa robot is the lowest among the four brands, and the cost performance is relatively high. Yaskawa welding robot includes welding package, and the quotation is only 1.3/14 million. Compared with Panasonic's welding robot, Yaskawa takes the road of mass production.
Domestic market analysis
In recent years, Yaskawa has taken frequent actions in the domestic market: establishing a new robot center, increasing factory investment, establishing a joint venture with Midea, etc., aiming at accelerating the realization of localized services. China is the demand-side market, and Midea is also a giant of home appliances. The demand for robots is huge, which can help Yaskawa achieve sales growth.
Yaskawa has been doing research on service robots, especially in the field of medical robots, but the progress in the Japanese market is not smooth, and it may bring new growth points in the domestic service robot market. At present, major robot ontology enterprises tend to seek cooperation with larger application enterprises. With the increasingly fierce market competition, such strategic cooperation will be more frequent in the future.
ABB's core technology is motion control system, which is also the biggest difficulty for the robot itself. ABB, which has mastered the motion control technology, can easily realize the performance of robots such as path accuracy, motion speed, cycle time, programmable design, and greatly improve the quality, efficiency and reliability of production.
Technology: The algorithm is the best, but slightly expensive
ABB first started with frequency converters. In China, most power stations and frequency conversion stations are made by ABB. For the robot itself, the biggest difficulty is the motion control system, and ABB's core advantage is motion control. It can be said that ABB's robot algorithm is the best of the four major brands. It not only has comprehensive motion control solutions, but also has professional and specific technical documents.
It is reported that ABB's control cabinet is attached with Robot Studio software, which can carry out 3D operation simulation and online functions. The connection with external equipment supports a variety of general industrial bus interfaces, and the communication with various brands of welding power supply, cutting power supply, PLC, etc. can also be realized by marking the input and output interfaces. In addition, ABB's control cabinet can freely set the current, voltage, speed, swing and other parameters of arc starting, heating, welding and arc ending sections, and can set and realize various complex swing tracks by itself.
ABB also pays attention to the overall characteristics of robots. It also pays attention to the design of robots while paying attention to quality. However, it is well known that ABB robots equipped with high standard control systems are very expensive. In addition, many enterprises reflected that ABB has the longest delivery time among the four major brands.
Domestic market analysis
ABB carries out the strategy of "holding high and beating high" in China, and pays attention to the cooperation with major customers in China. Huawei, Changhong and Tostar are the leaders of the application end and integrator of the 3C household appliance industry respectively. They have the role of wind vane in the industry. It can be seen that ABB attaches great importance to the 3C industry. Its future products will integrate more advanced technologies such as intelligence, interconnection and big data. Ontology enterprises begin to move towards the application end, and the relationship with system integrators will become closer; At the same time, ontology enterprises themselves have also begun to pay attention to the development of integrated applications.
KUKA
Kuka, Germany, was established in Augsburg, Germany in 1898. At first, it mainly focused on indoor and urban lighting, and soon began to set foot in other fields. The main customers of Kuka are from the field of automobile manufacturing. At the same time, it also focuses on providing advanced automation solutions for industrial production processes, and is more involved in brain surgery and radiography in hospitals.
Core areas
Kuka robots can be used for material handling, processing, spot welding and arc welding, involving automation, metal processing, food and plastic industries.
Technology: simple operation, but high failure rate
The event of Midea's acquisition of Kuka can be said to make Kuka angry. If ABB is the Benz in the car, then Kuka is the BMW in the car. Although both are high-end cars, the repair rate of BMW is higher than that of Benz.
It is reported that compared with ABB, Fanuc and other robots, the repair rate of Kuka robot is high. According to people familiar with the matter, almost every day, a robot that has used Kuka breaks down.
The advantage of Kuka in domestic sales lies in its good secondary development. Even Xiaobai, who has no technical foundation at all, can operate it in one day; On the human-computer interface, in order to cater to the habits of the Chinese people, Kuka is very simple, just as easy to use as a game machine. In contrast, the control system of Japanese brand robots has many keyboards, and the operation is slightly complex.
It is worth mentioning that Kuka has done a good job in the field of heavy-duty robots. Among robots with a capacity of more than 120KG, Kuka and ABB have the largest market share, while among heavy-duty 400KG and 600KG robots, Kuka has the largest sales volume.
Domestic market analysis
KUKA is currently accelerating the distribution of localized services in the Chinese market, opening up new territories in the southwest, and will continue to make efforts in the field of automotive equipment in the future. The event of Midea's acquisition of KUKA has been recorded in history, and has had a significant impact on the influence and market responsiveness of the two brands. The joint effect of Midea+KUKA in the future is also worth looking forward to.
FANUC
FANUC was founded in 1956. Three years later, it launched the electro-hydraulic stepping motor for the first time. In the 1970s, thanks to the rapid development of microelectronics technology, power electronics technology, especially computing technology, FANUC resolutely abandoned the electro-hydraulic stepping motor numerical control products that made it famous and began its transformation. In 1976, FANUC successfully developed a numerical control system, and then jointly developed a high-level numerical control system with Siemens, gradually becoming one of the most powerful enterprises in the world in terms of numerical control system, design and manufacturing.
Core areas
FANUC is a professional CNC system manufacturer in the world. Compared with other enterprises, industrial robots are unique in that process control is more convenient, the base size of the same type of robot is smaller, and it has a unique arm design.
Technology: very high precision, but not overload
Fanuc's research on CNC system can be traced back to 1956. The forward-looking Japanese technical experts foresaw the arrival of the 3C era and established a scientific research team. While applying the advantages of the numerical control system to robots, Fanuc's industrial robots also have high accuracy. It is reported that Fanuc's multifunctional six-axis small robot can achieve a repeatability accuracy of plus or minus 0.02 mm. In addition, compared with other enterprises, Fanuc Industrial Robot is unique in that the process control is more convenient, the base size of the same type of robot is smaller, and it has a unique arm design.
It is worth mentioning that Fanuc also applies the blade compensation function of CNC machine tool finishing to the robot, and inserts the blade compensation function from the algorithm, which enables the robot to walk in circle by circle in the process of finishing and cutting, while Yaskawa's robot body itself does not have this function, and to achieve this function can only be compensated through secondary development, This is also where many customers say that Yaskawa Robot is not very convenient.
However, Fanuc is not the best at the stability of the robot. When the speed reaches 80% during the full load operation, Fanuc's robot will alarm, which also shows that Fanuc's overload capacity is not very good. So Fanuc's advantage lies in the application of light load and high precision, which is also the reason why Fanuc's miniaturized robots (less than 24KG) sell well.
Domestic market analysis
FANUC's strategy is slightly different from that of other companies. Its strategy is to find and enter the market with large demand and target the Chinese market with huge growth potential. In the Chinese market, 55% of Fanuc's sales of industrial robots are used in general manufacturing industry, and the top three are household appliances, logistics and electronic and electrical industries. FANUC is the robot brand with the largest total sales in the current market. It does not rely on the sales of key customers, but adopts an open market strategy.
YASKAWA
Founded in 1915, it is the largest industrial robot company in Japan, with its headquarters in Kitakyushu, Fukuoka Prefecture. In 1977, Yaskawa Electric developed and produced Japan's first fully electrified industrial robot using its own motion control technology. Since then, it has successively developed various automatic robots for welding, assembly, painting, handling, and has been leading the global industrial robot market.
Core areas
The servo and motion controllers mainly produced by Yaskawa Electric are key parts of manufacturing robots. It has successively developed various kinds of automatic operation robots such as welding, assembly, spraying and handling. Its core industrial robot products include spot welding and arc welding robots, oil painting and processing robots, LCD glass plate transmission robots and semiconductor chip transmission robots, It is one of the earliest manufacturers to apply industrial robots to semiconductor production.
Technology: good stability, but slightly poor accuracy
After nearly a hundred years of inheritance of electrical motor technology, Yaskawa's market share of AC servo and frequency converter has steadily ranked first in the world. As early as 1977, Yaskawa developed Japan's first all-electric industrial robot.
Yaskawa started with the motor, so it can maximize the inertia of the motor. Therefore, the biggest characteristics of Yaskawa's robot are large load, high stability, no alarm during full load and full speed operation, and even overload operation. Therefore, Yaskawa has a relatively large market in heavy-duty robot applications, such as the automobile industry.
Compared with Fanuc's robots, the accuracy of Yaskawa's robots is not so high. On the basis of the same price, if customers require high accuracy, they often choose Fanuc's robots. However, the price advantage of Yaskawa robot is obvious. It can be said that the price of Yaskawa robot is the lowest among the four brands, and the cost performance is relatively high. Yaskawa welding robot includes welding package, and the quotation is only 1.3/14 million. Compared with Panasonic's welding robot, Yaskawa takes the road of mass production.
Domestic market analysis
In recent years, Yaskawa has taken frequent actions in the domestic market: establishing a new robot center, increasing factory investment, establishing a joint venture with Midea, etc., aiming at accelerating the realization of localized services. China is the demand-side market, and Midea is also a giant of home appliances. The demand for robots is huge, which can help Yaskawa achieve sales growth.
Yaskawa has been doing research on service robots, especially in the field of medical robots, but the progress in the Japanese market is not smooth, and it may bring new growth points in the domestic service robot market. At present, major robot ontology enterprises tend to seek cooperation with larger application enterprises. With the increasingly fierce market competition, such strategic cooperation will be more frequent in the future.
Source of this article: Robot innovation ecology, thank the author for his work.