China is set to become the top country employing robots to operate in its production plants by 2017.
According to the International Federation of Robotics (IFR), the country is currently improving and fine-tuning the automation of its car and electronic factories.
Even though the country has the biggest market in the $9.5-billion global robot trade, China is still far behind other industrialized countries when it comes to robot density.
While its industrial peers have hundreds of robots at their employ, China only has 30 robots per 10,000 workers in the manufacturing industries. South Korea had the most, with 437 robots; Japan has 323, Germany has 282, while the United States has 152 robots.
According to the IFR, China is set to change this trend soon. A race by car manufacturers to build more plants in China as well as wage inflation can lead to erosion of Chinese labor competitiveness. This would lead to the number of robots to balloon up to 428,000 by 2017.
"Companies are forced to invest ever more in robots to be more productive and raise quality," said Gudrun Litzenberger, IFR general secretary.
"In the current phase it's the auto industry, but in the next two or three years it will be driven by the electronics industry," she added.
Switzerland's ABB, Germany's Kuka, and Japan's Yaskawa and Fanuc are four robot markers currently thriving in China when it comes to the number of production sites. More sites would be set up in the near future, according to the tide of the trend.
"The automation of China's production plants has just started," said Per Vegard Nerseth, managing director of ABB Robotics. "We have witnessed swift, almost explosive growth over the last two or three years, surpassing even our expectations."