Key findings from the white paper:
• The localization rate of harmonic reducers in China has exceeded 75%, signaling a major shift in the domestic supply chain for core robot components.
• Costs in the smart robot sector are falling by more than 16% year over year on average, driven by advances in domestic manufacturing and scale.
• Welding robots carry an average annual usage cost of roughly 50,000–80,000 yuan, compared with 120,000–150,000 yuan for a human welder — a cost gap that continues to widen in favor of automation.
PwC partner Huang Qijia described smart robots as the core vehicle for the deep integration of AI and physical industries, framing the white paper as a snapshot of how quickly the economics of industrial automation are being rewritten.
The report lands amid a broader wave of commercial activity in the humanoid and industrial robot space, with component costs, supply chain maturity, and total cost of ownership emerging as the variables most likely to determine adoption pace across factories.