(Yicai) Aug. 5 -- The Chinese exoskeleton robot market exceeded CNY1.6 billion (USD237.1 million) last year, with the medical rehabilitation field accounting for the vast majority of that, according to a report by International Data Corporation.

About 26,000 exoskeleton robots worth CNY1.6 billion were shipped in China last year, IDC said in a report published yesterday. Despite medical rehabilitation exoskeleton robots accounting for only 17 percent of the total shipments, their value topped CNY1.4 billion, equal to more than 88 percent of the total.

Consumption stimulation exoskeleton robots were about 19,000 units last year, making up over 73 percent of the total shipments, as they benefited from the aging population and declining costs. However, their value was only CNY110 million (USD16.3 million) or 6.8 percent.

The remaining 3,800 robotic exoskeletons worth CNY78 million (USD11.6 million) were used in industry application scenarios, accounting for 15 percent and 4.9 percent of the total shipments and value, respectively.

Medical rehabilitation exoskeleton robots are mainly used for mature scenarios in medical institutions right now, Fourier Intelligence, one of China’s first makers of medical rehabilitation exoskeletons, told Yicai. They will enter consumer homes only after they have been successfully applied in elderly care centers and nursing homes to undertake long-term functional maintenance, it noted.

In the next three years, exoskeleton robots will transform from “assisted devices” to “everyday equipment,” Liu Yun, chairman of Huayi Capital, said to Yicai. After obtaining certain recognition in the medical sector, the scale of exoskeleton robots in the consumer and industrial manufacturing industries will gradually rise, he added.

The real barrier for exoskeleton robots does not lie in hardware assembly but in artificial intelligence intent recognition, lightweight design, and closed-loop data algorithms, Liu explained. Enterprises must pay more attention to the perception ability of AI products and focus on forming a closed-loop business with data, he suggested.

Editor: Futura Costaglione