19th RoboCup on in China
The 19th RoboCup is taking place in central China's Anhui Province. The five-day tournament that is bringing back interest in robotics in China will take place till Thursday in the provincial capital Hefei. As many as 2,000 participants from 47 nations and regions are taking part in the event.
Goocoo Robot Industry Share Holding Co. Ltd., headquartered in Hefei, presented the new version of its pioneering model known as Kejia, a service robot designed by the University of Science and Technology of China. Kejia has won the 2014 Service RoboCup.
Chen Gang, deputy general manager of Goocoo Robot, was of the view, "Our company was involved in the real estate sector, but we took a leap of faith and changed to robot production at the end of last year. We are confident in the potential of the emerging intelligent robotics market".
For now, the company has not started large-scale production of service robots, as they are quite expensive for the use of the public. Chen said that majorly, their products are being bought by restaurants or event firms.
In the coming time, human assistance robots will become cost effective. There are chances that hospitals and families will be quite interested in having them. China has majorly industrial robots' market.
In 2014, around 57,000 industrial robots were sold in China, which are up 54% annually. The International Federation of Robotics, China's industries will have purchased 400,000 robots by 2017.