World Robot Conference in Beijing showcases latest robotics innovations

The 2105 World Robot Conference was held this week on Nov 23 - 25 at China's National Convention Center in Beijing. The event includes exhibition and a series of forums on robotics innovations.

The three days event showcased latest robotics technologies including robots that can handle daily tasks like foods serving, music playing, dance and badminton, and highly precise models that are able to conduct surgery.

The World Robot Conference also showcased a new manufacturing robot including mechanical arms for heavy industries. The event also showed a robot played games and sports with attendees, such as ping pong, and "rock, paper, scissor". There was also a soccer match which all the players were robots.

This year, the event filled with more than 100 robotics experts and 12 international robotics organizations, according to Inverse.

The showcased robots are divided into three categories: industrial, service, and specialized. The event also included "World Adolescent Robot Contest", the robotics contest participated by 130 teams from around the world.

The robotics exhibition and conference was sponsored by the Chinese government. It showed the country's intention to compete with two powers in robot game, Japan, and Korea. China is currently the biggest market in the world for robotics. It represents 56% of total robotics sales in 2014.

China is a potential market for service robotics as the country is facing an aging population and shrinking labor pool problems.

Chinese vice president Li Yuanchao, who spoke at the opening of the conference, told the audience that robots will become a huge industry in the long term service. He said that the global market is dominated by industrial robots, which account for 80% of the market share.

Li recalled that a vacuuming robot was listed as one of the top ten online home appliances purchases on the Singles' Day online shopping last month, says China Daily.

Meanwhile, vice president of the Chinese Institute of Electronics Xu Xiaolan said that China has been rapidly improving the development of service robots.

Many restaurants in China have been using robots and the vacuuming robots since the past two years. The robots have been gaining popularity among Chinese consumers.

The market of service robots is expected to grow by 25% annually in the Asia-Pacific region, and China will be the main contributor.

In Tribune, the head of Horizon robotics Yu Kai predicted that China's robots will do everything in the near future, from manufacturing cars to driving them. He also predicted that each person in China might have 10 robots. With the current population levels, there will be nearly 14 billion robots in China.