00:00Picking strawberries is easy if you're human, but revolutionary if you're a robot.
00:082025 marks the end of Beijing's five-year robotics plan, an ambitious vision to become
00:17a world leader in cutting-edge robotics across industries.
00:20The Chinese government wants to see robots in all areas of life, from agriculture to industry.
00:29He's actually working on designing the 3D model of the casting mold.
00:34And it doesn't really have a choice. With a huge population gap,
00:38soon human workers will no longer be an option.
00:41In China, most of the agriculture workers are 15 and 60 years old.
00:46So probably 20 years later, it's difficult to find the farming workers.
00:52Because the young generation, they don't like the poor working environment,
00:56and also the pay is relatively low.
00:58The strawberry picker combines computer vision and AI
01:01to harvest strawberries with less damage than a human can.
01:04But Chinese farmers are put off by the cost, and domestic demand is low.
01:10Research by both the European and US Chamber of Commerce says Beijing's 2025 plan to become
01:15a technological world leader has only partially met its goals,
01:20and that Chinese industry does still rely on some foreign technology.
01:29This robot uses an NVIDIA chip. The manufacturer hopes it will find a home in the fields of Europe.
01:35The China Robot Industry Alliance says the total number of exported robots is less than 5%.
01:41The Made in China label still makes customers cautious until they see what the robots can do.
01:56This self-driving forklift knows that human means slow down, another forklift means stop,
02:06and an inanimate object means navigate around it and carry on with your tasks.
02:11There's a lot of new players entering the market in Europe and the US with kind of copycat
02:22versions of different robotics that you'll see at a lot of the trade shows.
02:26There's a lot of innovations coming out of China, and I think it's taking the world some time to
02:31catch up to that, but we're getting there.
02:33China's domestic brand market share is at less than half. Beijing had wanted that figure to hit
02:4070% by this year. China imports more high-end machinery and robots than it exports. But the US
02:48President Donald Trump may have given the sector an unexpected helping hand.
02:52Our US market, our revenue, grow three to five times this year compared with last year.
02:59I guess that's because of this manufacture back to US trend. That really helps with,
03:05you know, the factory want to expansion and how a lot of budget to spend.
03:10This medical robot can't replace a human, but instead works with a surgeon. The doctor sits at the
03:16console, while technically it's the robot that's doing the surgery.
03:21Now our operators are using the instruments to remove the shell from a quail egg. Actually,
03:31it's a raw quail egg. This is to simulate the most delicate motions during a surgery. But it's still
03:39relatively easier when you're using this robot to use your hands. Okay, good.
03:45Surgery successful on eggs and on humans. The manufacturer says patients suffer less bleeding
03:52and recover faster from their keyhole surgeries, including removing cancer. And it costs half the
03:58price of its US competitor. China is automating at a rate that far outstrips any other country in the
04:06world. The International Federation of Robotics ranks the country third in the world for number of
04:12industrial robots, overtaking Germany in 2023. It doubled its ratio of industrial robots to workers
04:20within just four years. And unlike the West, Beijing can plough money into robotics at scale
04:26and in the long term, meaning it can corner strategic markets that take decades to become profitable.
04:33Its technological advances are also becoming increasingly difficult to track.
04:38Analysts warn China lags until suddenly it leads.
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