Industrial battery manufacturers Saft has made its first inroads into China’s fast-growing robot sector with its first order from a Shanghai-based elevator control system product maker.
STEP Electric Corporation specializes in industrial automation and has ordered Saft’s primary lithium batteries for its new generation robots to back up the memory in their onboard positioning systems when they are powered down.
The Saft primary lithium LS14500 cell design is optimized for base currents of a few µA with periodic pulses in the 5–150 mA range, which enables the robots to remember what position they were in when power interrupted, allowing them to recommence operations when the power supply is restored.
Saft has agreed to supply three years’ back-up power for STEP’s robot positioning systems, which is well in excess of the robots’ anticipated 24,000-hour service life.
China’s army of robots has increased from just 380 sets nationwide in 2000 to 56,000 sets in 2014, claims a report by the National Robot Development Forum.
