China’s ceramics-and-furniture hub Foshan bets on robotics with new funds

The city of Foshan, the country’s furniture and ceramics manufacturing hub in southern Guangdong province, has rolled out multiple initiatives to support the robotics industry in the latest example of how local governments are embracing the country’s strategic industries.

The Greater Bay Area city launched two industrial funds worth at least 3.5 billion yuan (US$488 million) combined, which would be “professionally managed” for the robotics industry, Foshan Vice Mayor Liu Jie said at a press conference in the city on Tuesday.

The local fiscal authority would grant at least 150 million yuan every year to support research and development, with each “key technology breakthrough project” receiving a maximum of 50 million yuan. This would cover core components like controllers, sensors, high-performance motors, lightweight materials and robotic bionic skin, according to a press release on Tuesday.

The initiatives also included “computing power vouchers” to cover up to 30 per cent of the cost of renting computing power for model training and inference, with an annual cap of 500,000 yuan per company.

The municipal government would also provide up to 500,000 yuan annually for schools, institutions and companies to train highly skilled workers and industrial designers for AI applications.

A citywide “AI and intelligent robot industrial alliance” was formed on Tuesday, with German robot maker Kuka, acquired by Foshan’s Midea in 2016, Huawei Technologies, and home appliance producer Hisense as members, chaired by the city’s robot maker Huashu Robot.