As China's robotics industry continues to flourish, more and more Chinese industries are using robots to pump up production, a scientist has said.

Robots developed by the Shenyang Automation Research Institute (SARI), known as the birthplace of China's robots, are now widely popular in auto, motorcycle, engineering, mechanics, electronics and other industries, said Wang Tianran, director of the institute.

Wang said robots created by SARI, which is under the Chinese Academy of Sciences, have taken one third of China's market shares.

In recent years, various companies signed contracts worth 200 million yuan (about 24 million US dollars) with SARI, based in Shenyang, the capital of northeast China's Liaoning Province.

SARI has won 18 top prizes in robotics research. The country's first submergible robot was made at the institute in 1985, and it now can make robots capable of exploring deep-sea areas with depths of up to 6,000 meters.

An increasing number of Chinese enterprises have discovered the value of robots which can work in special environments such as those full of dust, toxic gas, noise or under water.

SARI's robots have been purchased by such companies as Shenyang Jinbei, Guangzhou Sanshui and Shanghai Huizhong, Wang said.

Findings from a survey of 12 enterprises which started to use robots from 1995 show that the devices are responsible for an additional output value of 8.5 billion yuan (about one billion US dollars). (Xinhua)