China has sold 18,519 domestically-produced industrial robots in the first half of 2017, a 22.9% increase over last year, according to the China Robot Industry Conference recently held in Chongqing municipality.

“Homemade industrial robots have been applied in 37 industrial divisions and 102 sub-divisions,” said Qu Daokui, president of the China Robot Industry Alliance.

Industrial robots have been mostly applied to tasks involving lifting, loading, and unloading. A total of 11,879 robots have been introduced to this area, accounting for 64.1% of the total sales.

A total of 3,033 robots have been sold to the welding and brazing industries, the second largest domain of robots application in China.

Automobile manufacturing, computers, communications, and other electronic products manufacturing, general equipment manufacturing, and electric apparatus manufacturing are the major industries of robot application, according to statistics released by the conference.