[Insight] Policy support and technology upgrading drive the rapid development of the underfoot robot industry

However, due to the high technical complexity and high R&D costs, the commercialization process of foot robots is relatively slow, and Boston Power, a global industry leader, only started the commercialization of related foot robot products in 2019.
Foot robot is a mobile robot with foot structure, which can automatically adjust the appropriate shape according to the terrain. It is an ideal platform for all-terrain movement. According to the size of the foot, the foot robot can be divided into three categories: biped robot, quadruped robot and hexapod robot.
Compared with wheeled or tracked robots, foot-type robots have strong adaptability to terrain, and can complete complex actions such as walking, running, jumping, going up and down steps on complex roads; It has strong versatility and can be used as a carrier to carry cargo frames in the field of transportation, laser radar in the field of patrol inspection and rescue and disaster relief, and cleaning tools in the field of household services; It also has strong maneuverability and faster moving speed.
As early as around 1990, many enterprises in the United States and Japan, such as Boston Power, Honda, Toyota, Sony and so on, started the research on commercial foot robots, and their research and development achievements came out one after another in the early stage of the 21st century. However, due to the high technical complexity and high R&D costs, the commercialization process of foot robots is relatively slow, and Boston Power, a global industry leader, only started the commercialization of related foot robot products in 2019.
However, China’s foot robot industry started relatively late and is still in the early stage of commercialization. According to the “2023-2027 Global Foot Robot Industry Deep Market Research and Key Regional Research Report” released by the New Scientology Industry Research Center, local enterprises mainly include Yushu Technology, Yunshen, Ulan Technology, Kazaki Robot, Xiaomi, Tencent, Xiaopeng, etc. However, under the background of the strong support of relevant policies and the gradual arrival of market outlets, China’s foot robot industry shows a rapid development trend.
In terms of policy, in recent years, the country has successively issued a number of policies to support the development of the robot industry. For example, the 14th Five-Year Plan for the Development of the Robot Industry issued by the country in December 2021 proposed to expand the application of robots in special industries such as mining, petroleum, chemical industry, power, construction, aviation, aerospace, nuclear industry, public safety, emergency rescue and so on. As a kind of robot with high versatility and wide application fields, the foot robot industry will develop rapidly under the continuous good of relevant policies.
According to the industry analysts of the new thinking world, in terms of demand, China’s industry and manufacturing industry are currently in a critical period of intelligent and automatic transformation and upgrading, and the development of intelligent foot robots is the key to respond to the industrial change and meet the market demand. At the same time, in recent years, the related technologies such as the foot robot drive technology, intelligent control, intelligent sensing, reverse engineering, etc. have made great progress, which has further promoted its application to be more diversified. At present, China’s foot robot has begun to try to enter the field of to B (enterprise oriented) and to C (consumer oriented), and the industry has a huge space for future development.