The global robot market, consisting of industrial, special and service robots, is in stable growth. Service robots in particular are proliferating.
Security robots mainly perform functions such as security patrols, monitoring and early warning, and remote command and dispatch. The main application scenarios include police security, grain depots, warehousing and logistics.
In the case of police security, robots can assist the police to understand the scene and remote command in a timely manner. In non-police scenarios, the security robot can make up for the lack of security forces, especially in fire and anti-theft night scenes, master the real-time situation of people, cars and objects.
At present, there are about 20 related companies in the market, and the first batch of security robots has been officially launched. As at 2018, the overall shipment of China's security robots was around three to four thousand units.
The working environment of security robots is usually unstructured scenes, people and things change a lot, there are higher technical barriers to be broken in sports navigation, path planning, obstacle avoidance, and the current products are still insufficient to meet customer needs. In the future, with the continuous iterative optimization of service robot-related technologies, the maturity of security robot products will continue to increase, and market shipments are expected to grow rapidly after 2020.
Chinese security robots were born around 2015, and a small number of commercial landings began at the end of 2016. According to expert interviews and our research, the top shipments of leading companies’ security robot exceeded 1,078 units in 2019, with a total sales revenue of approximately CNY 830 million. The customers are mainly public security, grain depots, railway stations and airports.
As the prices of key components such as sensors continue to decline, and the government and major companies in the industry formulate relevant standards for security robots, it is expected that the security robot market will initially enter the expansion stage from 2021, with an annual growth rate of about 30%. It is expected that the whole market will be sold in 2024, reaching nearly CNY 3 billion.
According to Mordor Intelligence, the commercial end-user industry is expected to hold a significant share. Commercial enterprises and related businesses account for a massive portion of the economy, with the prosperous industry boasting huge budgets to spend on enhancing security. Thus, security robots in this sector offer an appealing and quantifiable value proposition. While billions of dollars are being spent on R&D in autonomous vehicles, indoor robots for commercial spaces reap the technology and cost benefits on sensors, computing, machine learning, and open-source software. With the increase in budget for commercial security spending and the availability of a largely untapped market, the security robot sector is anticipated to grow at a significant pace. The trend of indoor robots is gaining wide popularity in the market, with their diverse range of applications across different sectors, such as offices and hospitals, among others. Robots have the potential to deliver a range of safety and commercial benefits, and the companies in the market are developing novel robotic systems for specific applications.