Techman Robot Inc (達明機器人), a robotic arm partner of Nvidia Corp, yesterday said it aims to outpace the 20 percent annual growth for the “collaborative robot” (cobot) industry this year, driven primarily from rising demand from southeastern Asia and China.
Techman, a subsidiary of Quanta Computer Inc (廣達電腦), focuses on developing user-friendly robotic systems with integrated vision capabilities. Using artificial intelligence (AI) technologies, Techman’s cobots could recognize the orientation and presence of materials, perform testing and inspection, and dynamically pick and place tasks.
Techman is the world’s No. 2 AI cobot supplier, behind only Odense, Denmark-based Universal Robots. The Taiwanese firm had shipped more than 15,000 AI robots as of September last year.
Photo: Fang Wei-chieh, Taipei Times
“The cobot industry is to grow 20 percent each year. We are targeting more than 20 percent growth this year” in revenue, Techman president Haw Chen (陳尚昊) told reporters on the sidelines of a forum in Taipei.
Techman’s sales posted annual growth of 17.54 percent to NT$1.48 billion (US$45 million) last year from NT$1.26 billion in 2023. The cobot market is expected to expand at an annual compound growth rate of 20.1 percent from this year to 2030, market researcher Mordor Intelligence forecast.
The Asia-Pacific region is to be the growth engine of the company, especially Southeast Asia and China, Chen said.
A majority of Techman’s robotic arms or robotic systems are adopted in industrial automation such as in vehicle manufacturing plants, electronics manufacturers, machinery companies and warehouses, the company said.
The US market is a new growth driver and is expected to see steep growth this year, Chen said.
Last year, Techman set up a warehouse in Indiana to store spare parts in collaboration with its customers and established a hub in El Paso, Texas. The company also has sites in Mexico, along with many other local manufacturers allocating production to the country amid the US-China trade dispute, he said.
Techman does not expect new trade policy from the incoming administration of US president-elect Donald Trump, such as heavy import tariffs, to have adverse impact on its business, Chen said.
“We have to provide on-site services to our customers,” Chen said, adding that the company is following the steps of its customers’ expansion overseas.
Taiwanese firms have increased investment in the Philippines in recent years as Manila’s ties with Washington deepen and global supply chains continue to shift away from China, an expert at the Chung-Hua Institution for Economic Research (CIER, 中華經濟研究院) said yesterday. The Philippines had not been among Taiwanese investors’ top choices in Southeast Asia, CIER Taiwan ASEAN Studies Center director Kristy Hsu (徐遵慈) said at a seminar in Taipei. However, Taiwan’s investment in the country has grown significantly since the COVID-19 pandemic, reaching US $257 million last year, a high in recent years, she said. Although Taiwan’s total investment in the Philippines still lags
Intel Corp regards Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co (TSMC, 台積電) as a longstanding partner, as the US chipmaker would continue outsourcing production of advanced chips to TSMC, Intel chief executive officer Lip-Bu Tan (陳立武) said yesterday. “I don’t look at people as competitors. I look at the collaboration... Nvidia is also, you know, a good friend,” Tan told a news conference following his keynote speech at the Computex trade show in Taipei. “It’s a very trusted partnership for us... We are a big, top customer for them, and we’re going to continue doing that,” he said, referring to TSMC, the world’s largest foundry
Hon Hai Precision Industry Co (鴻海精密) yesterday said it would work with US chipmaker Intel Corp to jointly develop and deploy next-generation artificial intelligence (AI) infrastructure and intelligent computing platforms in a move to capture booming demand for AI computing systems. Hon Hai, also known as Foxconn Technology Group (富士康), said in a statement that the partnership would combine its global manufacturing scale, system integration expertise and AI data center deployment capabilities with Intel’s strengths in processor architecture, silicon technologies and software ecosystem. The companies said they plan to work on equipment used in AI data centers, including server racks powered by
Artificial intelligence (AI) agents would supplant smartphones as the center of people’s digital lives, fundamentally reshaping personal devices and driving a major computing upgrade cycle, Qualcomm Inc CEO Cristiano Amon said yesterday. In his keynote speech for this year’s Computex trade show in Taipei, Amon said that the rise of "agentic AI" — AI systems capable of reasoning, planning and carrying out tasks autonomously — would transform how people interact with technology across phones, PCs, vehicles and wearable devices. Describing the technology as the next major evolution in computing, Amon said that "2026 is the year of agents.” For decades, smartphones have sat
RSS