Hiwin comes with a bright picture for its robot shipments this year. (A Hiwin medical robot shown)
Impressed by the sanguine outlook of the robot market, Chairman Eric Chuo of the Hiwin Group recently forecasted its?industrial robot shipments to surge?to 100 systems?monthly in the second half of this year, up from the current five systems.
The sharp shipment increase is predicted?to boost robot sales to 10% of the group's 2014 revenue.
Chuo said the group,?currently Taiwan's No.1 manufacturer of precision components for machine tools and the world's No.2 supplier of ball screws, has been?making robots?for some time?while?citing the Taiwan government's plan to boost the island's automation and robot industry to the scale of NT$1 trillion (US$33.3 billion) a year.
The group's Hiwin Technologies Corp. began making single-joint articulated robots and Cartesian coordinate robots in cooperation with its subsidiary, Hiwin Mikrosystem Corp. last year by using mutual?fortes:?The parent company's?expertise in?ball screws and linear guideways and?the subsidiary's?linear servo motors,?systems and related components.
Its Cartesian coordinate robots are under tests at silicon foundry giant Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co. (TSMC), and?the group has begun?production of its multi-joint articulated robots, spider robots, and wafer-handling robots this year.
The company has also?made progress in heathcare-robotics, having experimented with the prototypes?co-developed with the Show Chwan Memorial Hospital in central Taiwan for micro surgery. The leg-rehabilitation robot it develops?with the China Medical University in central Taiwan has been verified to meet the ISO1385 standard.
Also the bathing-assistance robot being co-developed with the Buddhist Tzu Chi General Hospitals was verified at the end of 2013 while the arm-rehabilitation robot being co-developed with the National Cheng Kung University in southern Taiwan will be verified in 2014.
These medical robots will go on sale in both Taiwan and?China by the end of this year, making Hiwin the first Taiwanese precision-machinery maker to expand into robot manufacture.
