China: Robot repair jobs in demand in south China's tech hub.
Storyline Robot repair jobs in demand in south China's tech hub As China’s robot rental market expands, robot repair workers have become invaluable in the southern tech hub Shenzhen. To meet demand, classes have been established at the city’s renowned electronics district, Huaqiangbei, to train people who are eager to enter the job market. These trainees are busy diagnosing, assembling and disassembling humanoids. Some students traveled far distances to attend the classes and see them as an opportunity to change their futures. Wang Wei, Trainee: "I used to run a beauty salon with my wife in Hefei, Anhui. I felt that, in the future, robots would likely enter households just like cars. So, repair and maintenance should still be a blue ocean." The center offers three types of courses that range in length from 12 to 35 days, and range in price from about 1,200 to 2,700 U.S. dollars. The classes aren’t cheap, but the price covers the costs of the equipment which can be expensive. Xiang Dongming, Director of Teaching, Shenzhen Huahang Education Technology Co., Ltd.: "For equipment like robots and robotic dogs, prices range from tens of thousands of yuan for basic models to hundreds of thousands for high-end ones. All instruction involves hands-on disassembly of actual machines. And then the students' workstations — the heat gun costs over a thousand yuan, the stabilized power supply four or five hundred apiece, the repair bench around two thousand. So, the cost of a single set of equipment is really high." According to data from this year’s World Robot Conference in Beijing, in the first half of the year, China shipped more than 40,000 humanoid robots, accounting for 97% of the global total. [Restrictions: No access Chinese mainland]
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