The cultivation of industrial robot talent ushered in the "bottleneck period"

At present, as one of the ten key areas of “Made in China 2025”, the industrial robot industry is in a period of booming development. The use of industrial robots covers many fields such as automobile manufacturing and electronics. China has become the world’s largest industrial robot market for three consecutive years. At the same time, the voice of "machine substitution" has become louder and louder. According to a market survey conducted by the Chinese Academy of Engineering, 64.2% of the companies surveyed have strong intentions, and 14.5% of the companies are doing “machine substitution” preparations. However, with the rapid development of the industrial robot industry and the growing gap in professional talents, the cultivation of industrial robots has ushered in a “bottleneck period”.

So, as an emerging education field, how to break this bottleneck? How to treat the shortage of industrial robot professionals? What is the current state of teaching of industrial robots? With these issues, this article takes the teaching practice of the Wuhu Vocational and Technical College as a case, through an exclusive interview with the College of Computer Teaching and Research of Anhui Province, Standing Director, Deputy Secretary-General, Professor Qian Feng, Dean of School of Information Engineering of Wuhu Vocational and Technical College, to answer questions The form of the above issues are explained.

Q: What do you think about the shortage of current industrial robot professionals?

Qian Feng: With regard to the shortage of talents for industrial robots, I think it needs to be subdivided. At present, the lack of voices for industrial robot professionals is loud. But what is the lack of one? Is it the application of industrial robots, the system integration of industrial upgrading, or the lack of robot manufacturing talents?

In fact, industrial robot professionals can be subdivided into high-quality, skilled personnel in robot manufacturing, application, and maintenance, covering industrial robot system simulation, integrated design, programming, debugging, operation, sales, and intelligent automated production systems. Operation, maintenance, renovation and management.

The first major gap is the lack of manufacturing talent for industrial robots. Industrial robots include the three core components of controllers, servo-driven motors and speed reducers. The cost accounts for more than 70% of robots, which is also the major bottleneck restricting the Chinese robotics industry. It is difficult to highlight this bottleneck in the short term. To break the bottleneck in essence, great effort and investment are required. Like reducers and controllers, the greater the hope given and the greater the pressure, the lack of technical personnel in this area is a lack of higher-level talents, but its development potential is very large.

The second major gap is the lack of talent for industrial robots. The lack of this aspect can be combined with existing technologies to ease student and industrial workers in school for a certain period of time. According to the development plan of the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology, by 2020, the installed capacity of industrial robots in the country will reach 1 million units, and the demand for industrial robots will reach 200,000. The shortage of highly skilled talent will increase year by year. The national robot development industrial plan has already made "strengthening the construction of qualified personnel" as one of the six major safeguards for the development of the robot industry.

The third major gap is the lack of system integration talents in the robot industry, which involves the transformation of the industrial robot industry. In general, a qualified college graduate can only basically achieve this kind of industrial robot system integration ability after 5 years, in order to solve the problems in the system integration. This requires a profound accumulation of industrial processes and production processes.

Q: What problems did you encounter in the teaching of industrial robots?

Qian Feng: After sorting out the industry's subdivision, there are targeted and integrated relevant contents in the profession to solve practical problems. Wuhu Vocational and Technical College's robotics professional is located in the bottom of the robot control, drive and other aspects. In our teaching practice, we found that most robot teaching and research equipment can only perform maintenance, assembly, application programming, practical operation, and can't meet our professional bottom control.

Therefore, in recent years, the college and many companies have carried out a series of school-enterprise cooperation to design and optimize the teaching equipment we need. At present, the college has designed several types of equipment. At present, there are still many similar situations in the curriculum system. We are working through the production, research, and research work to solve and perfect it by companies, schools, and teachers.

Q: How do you think about the professional talents of industrial robots cultivating the "integration of production and education"?

Qian Feng: Actually, this is the college's in-depth promotion of the collaborative educating mechanism, the implementation of the “going out, please come in” teaching philosophy, the construction of the “smart manufacturing” talent training model, and the promotion of talent training and the seamless integration of enterprise needs. Important embodiment. This is also a new development path opened up by current vocational schools. It can not only promote the sound development of vocational education, but also focus on solving the structural contradictions and shortage of talents in the industry, and is more conducive to the prosperity and development of local economies. At the same time, it is also conducive to stimulating students’ creativity, improving the professional level of teachers, and creating conditions for students to read and work together. It should be a multi-win situation.

Whether it is an industrial robot manufacturing company or an industrial robot teaching equipment company, we must conduct in-depth communication and exchanges. On this basis, we can do a good job in cultivating students' orientation. In the process of cooperation between schools and related companies, the deeper the exchange, the more grounded the production of equipment, the more able to solve the practical problems of the school. Only through the cooperation of school-enterprise cooperation throughout the entire process of personnel training, from the formulation, adjustment and optimization of training programs for professional robots of industrial robots, to collaborative teaching of personnel training, to graduation design and enterprise internship, etc., the needs of enterprises should be taken as The important direction and goal of talent cultivation can enable students to conduct highly efficient knowledge learning, ability training, and quality development in an industrial context, and promote the “seamless connection” of talents. However, it cannot be said that it is completely "seamless," and it can only be said that this "seam" is made even smaller.

Q: Recently, I saw a new type of teaching equipment named "Industrial Robots AR Training System" on the Internet. I heard that compared with the traditional forms of teaching, it has more explosive power. I don't know what you think about this.

Qian Feng: In fact, long before our school robot set up industrial robotics professional, we purchased a set of industrial robot equipment. However, we found many unavoidable problems in the use of equipment. For example, physical robots are expensive, occupy a large area, consume a lot of teaching resources, and operate a real machine with security risks. It is impossible to implement multi-scene application teaching, it is difficult to meet a manpower machine, human-machine interaction is poor, and so on. The above six problems have plagued the practical teaching of industrial robots for a long time. It is not an easy task to fundamentally solve them.

The innovative choice of teaching styles and high-tech elements is undoubtedly an excellent choice. The biggest advantage of the “AR robot training system for industrial robots” lies precisely in the AR smart glasses imaging system. The industrial robots and industrial automation systems are displayed in virtual images in 3D. The teaching pendants and programming platforms used in the robotic robots are accompanied by a teaching platform for solid industrial robots. Exactly the same. The system can flexibly and vividly display robot bodies, robot workstations, and robot accessories. Moreover, any tiny training operation can be recorded and monitored by the system, forming training big data and analyzing it. Each training becomes a perfection of the teaching mode and teaching content. The system is easy to use, low-cost, vivid, safe, and reliable. It can solve the six major bottlenecks in the training of industrial robots and can give some inspiration to the training of industrial robots.

In fact, with regard to the industrial robot simulation system, our school also made some useful attempts to create a simulated artificial robot arm and won the second prize in 2016 when it participated in the self-made teaching instrument contest in Anhui Province. In my opinion, the Real Robot R&D system developed by RealMax will be more perfect with this combination.