Industrial Robots Are On The Rise And China Has A Lot Of Them

Remarkable things happened in the past seven days. India and Canada entered into a major diplomatic row, with India calling back its high commissioner to Canada and expelling six Canadian diplomats. This was in response to allegations by Canadian prime minister Justin Trudeau that the government of India was involved in the killing of Khalistani separatist leader Hardeep Singh Nijjar on Canadian soil. The diplomatic row could interfere with Indian students’ plans to study in Canada and the flow of Canadian funds to India. Canada has dragged other members of the Five Eyes alliance, an intelligence alliance comprising the US, the UK, Australia and New Zealand, besides Canada, into its campaign ‘against Indian violation of Canadian sovereignty’.

Even as the Israeli bombing of the Gaza Strip and Lebanon continued and tension built up over the nature of Tel Aviv’s threatened response to the October 1 missile attack by Iran on Israel, oil prices stayed relatively tame. China’s much-hyped stimulus package has disappointed investors: while it runs to $562 billion, it is all financial engineering and sees little fiscal boost.

Hyundai Motor Company of South Korea raised Rs 27,870 crore in India by selling a chunk of its shares in its Indian subsidiary. This has been India’s biggest Initial Public Offering, surpassing the previous biggie, the LIC IPO that raised Rs 21,000 crore by nearly a third. The success of the issue demonstrates the viability of India as a place where foreign companies can raise money, without a hitch either in the domestic securities market or in the foreign exchange market. With reserves in excess of $700 billion, the market does not see a $3 billion outgo of the IPO proceeds to the parent company in South Korea as a big deal.

The Hyundai IPO might well set a trend of large foreign companies raising capital in India. This would be good news for the country’s financial ecosystem.

The Nobel Prize for economics went to three American economists, Daron Acemoglu, Simon Johnson and James Robinson, who seek to explain the economic success/failure of nations in terms of how conducive their institutions are to promoting economic activity.

Rise Of The Robots

But the most significant developments over the last week relate to the world of technology, specifically, robotics. Tesla demonstrated a truly autonomous car, which relies on an array of cameras as the primary data input source. Google’s Waymo, in contrast, uses not just cameras, but also radar and lidar (photonic radar).

As these two models of driverless automobiles duke it out, they could probably listen to exciting music coming out of an orchestra conducted by a robot. Dresden Symphony Orchestra recently held a concert, with a three-armed robot conducting some classical music. The arms are capable of precise, delicate movements. Robots are already capable of holding a glass tumbler without crushing it and pouring liquids from a glass held in one hand to another glass held in the other hand without spilling. Different sets of instruments followed different robotic arms, each arm directing a cluster of instruments to play at a tempo different from that chosen by the other robot, creating a new kind of music, allegro and adagio overlaying each other at the same time, to create a unique effect. Those who insist that RD Burman has already achieved this effect, and more, might have a point, but the focus here is not the music, but the sophistication achieved by robots.

The technological feat of the week, if not of the year, was the retrieval by SpaceX, Elon Musk’s space venture, of its Starship’s first-stage booster rocket, the Super Heavy. After rising some 74 km and dispatching the Starship, complete with its second stage booster, into its predetermined trajectory, the Super Heavy returned to its launch pad. Firing rockets to slow its descent, the Super Heavy moved vertically down, in its last stage, with its nose pointing up, and as it approached the launch pad, two robotic arms of the launch tower caught it and lowered it gently on the launch pad. Reusable rockets have become a reality and stand poised to reduce the cost of space exploration significantly.

The increasing versatility and sophistication of industrial robots, when combined with near-instant communications (low-latency, in the jargon) and artificial intelligence, will make all the talk of a fourth industrial revolution realise actuality.

The World Robotics Report, an annual publication of the International Federation of Robotics, presents some sombre facts. Its latest version, WRR 2024, has data for 2023. “In 2023, the operational stock of industrial robots exceeded the four-million-unit mark and was computed at 4,281,585 units (+10%). Since 2018, the operational stock of industrial robots has been increasing by 12% on average each year,” it said. China’s stock of industrial robots has been growing at an annual average rate of 22%.

The biggest deployment of industrial robots is in China, which has a quarter of the world’s deployed industrial robots, although when it comes to robot density (number of robots per 10,000 employees), South Korea and Japan are ahead. China accounted for more than half of all fresh industrial robot deployments in 2023.

What this means is that the rise in wages and the exchange rate of the renminbi will be offset by a steady rise in industrial productivity. Any fear (fond hope) that China would, thanks to its declining population, run out of workers is wholly misplaced.

The report goes on to say, “The five major markets for industrial robots are China, Japan, the United States, the Republic of Korea, and Germany. These countries accounted for 78% of global robot installations (419,780 units).” Of course, with plenty of low-cost labour, India does not need robots. But India does need to invest in its low-cost labour to make them at least as productive as a robot.