A LARGE proportion of the leading robotic firms at the CES 2020  in the U.S. city of Las Vegas are from China, and this year’s state-of-the-art robots from China on display at the fair put an end to the outdated litany that Chinese companies lack innovation. In commercialized service robotics and artificial intelligence (AI), they are leading the pack.

Keenon Robotics, based in Shanghai, was founded in 2010 and started with a handful of employees, and now the company boasts 2,000 employees with more than 23,000 robots in operation around the globe.

The company managed to struggle, step by step, to surmount a host of design, AI and engineering challenges to reach the top of the heap in commercial robotic sales with worldwide market penetration, North American marketing director Wang Mingmin said, noting that it is all worth it in the end.

Wang credits the excellent robotic supply chain in China and the global labor shortage caused by COVID-19 for much of the market’s recent growth, 70 percent of which is in the restaurant industry.

“The pandemic has effected every industry and restaurants and hotels can’t find enough qualified people to work. We have a solution for their labor problems with our reliable, cost-effective robots,” he said.

Their fleet of innovatively-designed products includes hospitality, hotel, and catering/delivery robots that carry food, goods, and other deliveries to customers.

Their disinfection robots are perfect for killing viruses and bacteria in hospitals, hotel rooms, commercial kitchens, and other fields across multiple industries, and their delivery robots were used in more than 100 hospitals to make safe and sanitary deliveries during the worst of the COVID-19 pandemic.

Another leading Chinese robotics company, Shenzhen Pudu Technology Co., run by an innovative team of 20-somethings, offered a line-up of attractive, customer-facing robots at the CES this year, with colorful display screens and cute cat-like features, KettyBot and BellaBot, that enable businesses to begin customer engagement before they even enter the store or restaurant.

“KettyBot allows your special offers to reach more customers, delivering a higher conversion rate with a very novel approach,” said Pudu.

Their clever bots attract customers by cracking jokes, dancing, and interacting one-on-one with customers, plus details of a business’s products. Dishes or discounts can be shown to potential customers on-screen using voice interaction, further enhancing human-to-robot experience.

According to a research report published by MarketsandMarkets last August, the world’s service robotics market is projected to grow from US$36.2 billion in 2021 to US$103.3 billion by 2026. (SD-Xinhua)