At present, there are at least 48 countries in the world developing robots, and 25 of them have been involved in the development of service-oriented robots. In Japan, North America and Europe, more than 40 types of service robots have been put into experimental and semi commercial applications.

In recent years, the global service robot market has maintained a rapid growth rate. According to the data of the international robot alliance, in 2010, the global sales of service robots in professional fields reached 13741, with a year-on-year increase of 4%, and the sales volume of personal / family service robots reached 2.2 million, with a year-on-year growth of 35%, and the sales volume of 538 million US dollars, a year-on-year increase of 39%.

On the other hand, the aging of the global population has brought a lot of problems, such as the care of the elderly, and medical problems. The solution of these problems brings a lot of financial burden. Because of the characteristics of service robot, it can significantly reduce the financial burden. Therefore, service robots can be widely used.

According to the "report on the development of China's robot industry 2019" (hereinafter referred to as the "report"), the market scale of China's service robots is expected to reach US $2.2 billion in 2019, accounting for about a quarter of the estimated market size of global service robots in the same year.

China has made remarkable achievements in the field of special robot service, and has basically possessed the technology research and development ability covering the whole robot industry chain. It is estimated that by 2021, with the rapid development of robots in emerging application scenarios such as parking robots and supermarket robots, the market size of China's service robots is expected to be close to $4 billion.

We have gone through the 1.0 era (1960-2000) when robots have no perception of the external environment; the 2.0 era (2000-2015) in which the sense ability is constructed and part of human functions are simulated through the application of sensors and digital technology. Now it is the era of service robot 3.0, realizing the intelligent advancement from perception to cognition, reasoning and decision-making.

In addition, in recent years, data has become the core factor of production driving economic growth. The integration of big data and cloud computing technology has promoted the rapid development of the Internet of things, realizing the interconnection between people, people and things, and things and things, resulting in explosive growth of data volume. 5g and artificial intelligence, as tools linking the future at present, will actively embrace the service robot industry, laying a solid foundation for the coming 4.0 self-help era.

What is a service robot?

Service robot is a young member of the robot family, so far there is no strict definition. Different countries have different understanding of service robots. It can be divided into professional service robots and personal / family service robots. Service robots are widely used, mainly engaged in maintenance, repair, transportation, cleaning, security, rescue, monitoring and other work.

Service robot has a wide range of applications, mainly engaged in maintenance, repair, transportation, cleaning, security, rescue, monitoring and other work. After several years of collection and collation, the International Federation of robotics has given a preliminary definition of service robot: service robot is a kind of semi autonomous or fully autonomous robot, which can complete the service work beneficial to human health, but does not include the equipment engaged in production. Here, we include other robots that are close to people's lives.

In addition to mowing robots, by the end of 1999, almost all service robots equipped in the world were industrial robots. The main application fields of these special robots are: medical robots, multi-purpose mobile robot platforms, underwater robots and cleaning robots.

At the end of 1999, there were at least 6600 service robots in the world, including 3000 domestic robots, accounting for about 50%, underwater robots and medical robots accounting for 14% and 12%, cleaning robots accounting for 6%, and all other robots accounting for 23%.

It is estimated that the total number of service robots will increase to 49400 from 2000 to 2003, of which 40000 are domestic robots (except vacuum cleaning robots) and 5000 are medical robots. Household vacuum cleaning robots will enter the market by the end of 2000. If the price is reasonable, the sales volume of vacuum cleaning robots in 2003 may reach more than 250000. The total sales volume of home robots is expected to exceed 300000, which indicates that the service robot market is about to enter a new stage.

From the perspective of the demand and the existing technical level of the equipment, the robot for the disabled has not reached the expected goal. Robots will definitely become a key field of disability services in the future. Many important research institutions are concentrating on the development of such robots.

How many types of service robots are there?

1. Nurse assistant robot

"Nurse assistant" is an autonomous robot. It does not need wire guidance or plan in advance. Once programmed, it can complete the following tasks at any time: transporting medical equipment and equipment, delivering meals for patients, sending medical records, reports and letters, transporting drugs, transporting test samples and test results, and sending mail and parcels in the hospital. The robot is composed of a walking part, a travel controller and a large number of sensors. The robot can move freely in the hospital, and its speed is about 0.7 m / s. The robot is equipped with the building map of the hospital. After the destination is determined, the robot can autonomously navigate along the corridor by using the route calculation method. The static or moving objects can be detected by structured light vision sensor and omni-directional ultrasonic sensor, and the route can be corrected. Its omni-directional tactile sensor ensures that the robot will not collide with people and objects. The encoder on the wheel measures the distance it has traveled. In the corridor, the robot uses the corner of the wall to determine its position, while in a large space such as the ward, it can use the reflection belt on the ceiling to help positioning through the upward looking sensor. It can open the door when needed. In a multi-storey building, it can call the manned elevator and enter the elevator to the desired floor. In an emergency, for example, when a surgeon and his patient are using the elevator, the robot can stop and let the road open. After 2 minutes, it will restart and continue to move forward. Multiple destinations can be selected through the menu of "nurse assistant". The robot has a large fluorescent screen and user-friendly audio device, which makes it convenient for users to use.

2. Brain surgery robot

Robot assisted system in brain surgery, robots are more and more used in medical field, such as hip replacement with robots, chest surgery with robots and so on. This is mainly due to the high precision and small trauma of robot operation, which greatly reduces the pain of patients. According to the development trend of robots in the world, robot assisted surgery will become an inevitable trend.

3. Prosthetic robot

This is a computer and robot aided design and manufacture of artificial dentition of complete denture. The computer model of oral soft and hard tissues of patients with edentulous jaw was obtained by image and graphics technology. The geometric parameters of edentulous jaw were obtained by using the self-developed non-contact three-dimensional laser scanning measurement system. The computer-aided statistics of artificial dentition of complete denture was completed by expert system software. In addition, an adjustable tooth arrangement device was invented and manufactured for the transition between a single plastic artificial tooth and the final artificial dentition.

Based on the robot, any position and attitude control of teeth arrangement can be realized. A group of advanced dentists and prosthodontics have been trained and trained, which is equivalent to rapid prosthodontics. Using robot instead of manual tooth arrangement can not only operate in digital way more accurately than stomatological experts, but also avoid the mistakes caused by fatigue, emotion and negligence. This will make the design and manufacture of complete denture not only meet the individual physiological function and aesthetic needs of edentulous patients, but also reach the level of standardization, standardization, automation and industrialization, so as to greatly improve the production efficiency and quality.

4. Intelligent wheelchair

With the development of society and the improvement of human civilization, people especially the disabled need to use modern high technology to improve their quality of life and freedom of life. Because of various traffic accidents, natural and man-made disasters and various diseases, thousands of people lose one or more abilities (such as walking, hands-on ability, etc.) every year. Therefore, the research on the robot wheelchair used to help the disabled walk has gradually become a hot spot, such as Spain, Italy and other countries. The Institute of automation of the Chinese Academy of Sciences has successfully developed a robot wheelchair with vision and password navigation functions and voice interaction with people.

The key technology of the robot wheelchair is the safety navigation problem. The basic method adopted is ultrasonic and infrared ranging, and some of them also adopt password control. The main disadvantage of ultrasonic and infrared navigation is the limited controllable measurement range, which can be overcome by visual navigation. In the robot wheelchair, wheelchair users should be the center and active part of the whole system. For users, the robot wheelchair should have the function of interacting with people. This interactive function can be realized intuitively through man-machine voice dialogue. Although some existing mobile wheelchairs can be controlled by simple passwords, there are few mobile robots and wheelchairs with real interactive function.

5. Cable climbing robot

The robot system consists of two parts, one is the robot body, the other is the robot car. The robot body can climb along various inclined cables, and automatically complete the inspection, grinding, cleaning, electrostatic removal, primer and surface coating and a series of maintenance work on the high-altitude cable. The robot body is equipped with CCD camera, which can monitor the working condition at any time. The other part of the ground car is used to install the robot body and supply water and paint to the robot body, and monitor the working condition of the robot at high altitude.

6. Outdoor cleaning robot

With the modernization of the city, high-rise buildings have sprung up. In order to be beautiful and get better lighting effect, many office buildings and hotels use glass curtain wall, which brings about the problem of cleaning glass windows. In fact, not only glass windows, but also the walls of other materials need to be cleaned regularly.

After the reform and opening up, China's economic construction has a rapid development, high-rise buildings springing up everywhere. However, due to the nonstandard architectural design, the vast majority of domestic high-rise buildings are cleaned by hanging basket manually. Based on this situation, Robot Research Institute of Beijing University of Aeronautics and Astronautics has developed a glass ceiling (about 3000 square meters) with Scientific Research Institute of Beijing Railway Administration of Ministry of Railways for Beijing West Railway Station

The robot is composed of robot body and ground support robot car. The robot body is the main body crawling along the glass wall and completing the scrubbing action. It weighs 25kg. It can walk and scrub flexibly according to the actual environment, and has high reliability. The ground support car is a supporting equipment. When the robot works, it is responsible for power supply, gas supply, water supply and sewage recovery for the robot. It is connected with the robot through pipelines. The building cleaning robot is developed based on the wall climbing robot, which is only one of the uses of the wall climbing robot. The wall climbing robot has two adsorption modes: negative pressure adsorption and magnetic adsorption, while the building window cleaning robot adopts negative pressure adsorption. Magnetic adsorption wall climbing robot has also come out in China.

From eyeball effect to pan entertainment to instrumentalization, from multi-functional universal to vertical scene coupling, from product thinking to industry solutions, service robots are making progress in iteration. It can be expected that the service robot track, which is in the rising period of the industry, will usher in reshuffle and integration in the future. In addition, in 2020, we can see the acceleration of the application of service robots in to B field. And when robots are constantly applied to finance, retail, advertising, government affairs, restaurants, exhibitions, enterprise halls, banks and other industry terminals, it will certainly promote the reform of the industry and even the whole real economy. Although it's only just begun, the power of service robots is enough to push a new trend forward in the era of self-help.