SALES of robots in China are set to almost triple by 2018, defying a slowdown in the wider economy, the International Federation of Robotics (IFR) said Friday.

    China is trying to modernize its industrial production and has identified robotics as a major area for growth amid labor shortages and fast-rising wages.

    China still has far lower robot penetration than other big industrialized economies — just 36 per 10,000 manufacturing workers versus 478 in South Korea, 315 in Japan, 292 in Germany and 164 in the United States.

    Frankfurt-based IFR said that annual robot sales to China would jump to 150,000 by 2018, up from 57,000 in 2014.

    “The robotics industry is exhibiting rapid growth — completely unperturbed by the current economic fallow period experienced by other areas of Chinese industry,” China Robot Industry Alliance Secretary General Song Xiaogang said in the IFR’s statement.

    China’s robot market is still dominated by foreign players like ABB, Kuka and Yaskawa but China is encouraging its own robot makers with subsidies and the number of Chinese robotics firms is growing fast.(SD-Agencies)