The current robot industry mainly includes industrial robots, service robots, special robots, etc. Intelligence is the focus of the follow-up development of the robot industry, and maintaining technological innovation is the focus of industrial development.

Industrial robots have become an important technology to promote the transformation and upgrading of traditional manufacturing industry to digital and intelligent. Manufacturing industry is an important symbol of a country's competitiveness and an important part of the national economic entity. In 2010, the total output value of my country's manufacturing industry has surpassed that of the United States and has become a world manufacturing country, but it is not yet a manufacturing power. Because the production methods of my country's manufacturing industry are backward, many industrial production is still a labor-intensive industry development model with low labor costs as the main means of competition, and the technical content and product added value are low. With the decline in the number of working-age population and the increase in labor costs in my country, the demographic dividend advantage is lost, and the low-end manufacturing model centered on low-cost labor is facing severe challenges. China should accelerate the adjustment of industrial structure, promote the transformation and upgrading of manufacturing industry, and promote the transformation from labor-intensive mode to information and automation mode of production. At present, my country's industrial development has entered a critical period of upgrading and transformation. It is necessary to improve the technical level of my country's manufacturing industry through industrial upgrading and transformation, and build my country from a manufacturing country into a manufacturing power. This is a major event related to the survival of the country.

As an important part of manufacturing equipment, industrial robots have obvious industrial characteristics. Industrial robots are an important carrier for the manufacturing industry to realize digitalization, intelligence and informatization. Robots and complete sets of automation equipment with them promote the manufacturing industry from intensive manual operations. Upgrading to the direction of informatization and automation is an important path to improve the development quality and competitiveness of the manufacturing industry, industrial robots to digital, intelligent development will promote the arrival of China's third industrial revolution.

Service robot technology is an important technical guarantee for serving people's livelihood science and technology and aging society. China's aging population, a large number of disabled people, and obvious regional differences in social service levels have become prominent problems restricting the harmonious development of China's society. It is urgent to promote the rapid development of people's livelihood science and technology represented by domestic service, helping the elderly, helping the disabled and medical robots. The outline of the National medium-and long-term Science and Technology Development Plan (2006-2020) clearly takes service robots as a strategic high technology for priority development in the future. In 2013, the number of people aged over 60 in China reached 0.202 billion, and the aging level reached 14.8 per cent, of which more than 40 million were disabled and the old-age dependency ratio reached 21.58 per cent. The family structure of our country makes the traditional family pension way face severe challenges, and the pressure of social pension has increased, which has become a social problem of concern to the whole country. At the same time, the total number of disabled people in my country has reached 82.96 million. The development of rehabilitation aids is an effective means to help disabled people return to society and is one of the important indicators of the country's social development level.

At present, the development characteristics and trends of robot technology are intelligent and the interaction between human and robot. Intelligence is the third stage of the development of robots, with the perception function and autonomous behavior control function of the robot has become the development trend, in the complex, unknown unstructured environment of environmental perception and cognition, autonomous decision-making and behavior control become the key technology of the development of intelligent robots. Human communion is a common feature of the new generation of robots. The working space of traditional industrial robots is isolated from people, using pre-programmed control and teaching box interaction, and there is no safety guarantee. The new generation of robots and people work in the same natural space, coordinate and cooperate closely, and need to interact with people naturally to ensure the safety of robot work.

In order to realize the interaction between robot and human, it is necessary to solve the problems of environment understanding, intelligent control, behavior safety and human-computer interaction. Among them, the environmental understanding problem includes the robot's perception and understanding of the natural, unpredictable and complex dynamic environment; the intelligent control problem is the robot's intelligent decision-making and control in the case of more diversified goals and tasks, higher operational flexibility, deeper human-machine cooperation, and more complex and changeable processes; behavioral safety issues include technologies that ensure human-machine-object safety when physical boundaries disappear, close contact, and close cooperation between robots and people; human-computer interaction issues include human-computer interaction technologies that can adapt to each other and are intelligent, robust, friendly, and safe.