A technician installs an artificial hand onto an industrial robot at a factory operated by E-Deodar Robot Equipment Co., a wholly-owned subsidiary of Ningbo Techmation Co., in Foshan, China, on Tuesday, Feb. 28, 2017. Startup E-Deodar is building $15,000 industrial bots that are about a third cheaper than foreign brands and are being used to automate assembly lines across the Pearl River Delta manufacturing hub. China is embracing robotics with the same full-on intensity that's made it a force in high-speed rail and renewable energy. Photographer: Qilai Shen/Bloomberg
Scenes from China’s quest to dominate the robotic future: At startup E-Deodar, a human-looking droid serves coffee to employees who are building US$15,000 (RM65,542) industrial bots that are about a third cheaper than foreign brands and are being used to automate assembly lines across the Pearl River Delta manufacturing hub.
Some 1,900 kilometres (1,200 miles) to the north, inside a lab at Beijing-based e-commerce giant JD.com Inc, a spider-like robot plunges down from its frame, seizes a book on a conveyor belt with its suctioned claws and hurls it into a crate. The machine can sort 3,600 objects an hour, four times as many as a person – just one piece of the robotic technology the company’s developing to automate warehouses.
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