With an eye to making China one of the largest markets for its robotic home vacuums, iRobot, a U.S. consumer robot manufacturer, says it welcomes China's fast paced robotic development and is eager to leverage that by investing more in research and development.

China has become "one of the largest markets for robot vacuums worldwide; it has had accelerated growth over the past three years," said Christian Cerda, chief operating officer of iRobot, adding that China is the fastest growing market and the fourth-largest region for the company.

IRobot launched a floor mopper tailor-made for the China market in 2016 and established a commercial team at a Shanghai office to directly manage sales, marketing and after-sales service, in order to be more responsive to the local market, said Cathy Song, communications manager at iRobot China.

Song said the company is mainly focusing on the premium segment.

"We've been the leader in the over 3,000 yuan (475 U.S. dollars) premium robotic vacuum cleaner market."

She added that the floor mopper is most successful in Asian countries where hard floors are common. Currently, it brings in about 10 percent of iRobot's total revenue globally. Wet floor care products account for around 40 percent of its sales in China.

"The growth in China is led by some Chinese competitors," Cerda said. "Share-wise, the largest is Ecovacs, and we have seen recently some entrances to the market with competitors like Xiaomi."

"Compared to the robot market worldwide, the Chinese market has a lower price point, and has a very large segment of the market with very basic and affordable robot vacuums," Cerda added. "China as a country has put a lot of emphasis on the development of AI, and we are seeing a lot of activities in this area."

He said the Made in China 2025 initiative would also help companies in China succeed: "We welcome it, and we think this is good for robotics development worldwide, and we're happy to see this sector growing and developing in China."

Cerda said that all of iRobot's manufacturing was based in China and recently, the company has also been doing more design in China. The company estimated it invested up to 100 million U.S. dollars in R&D last year and there would be more in the future.

"The capability of robot design has improved significantly over the past few years, so we are leveraging that," Cerda said.

"China has tremendous talent and infrastructure to support the robotics industry," Cerda added. "We want to lead in the premier end market in China, and we want to lead through increasing intelligence."

"We're expanding our engineering capabilities at our Guangzhou office and we recently built a test lab there," Song said.

When it comes to the recent trade disputes between China and the U.S., Cerda added although the consumer robotics industry has not been affected by the tariffs imposed by China as well as the US, he hopes the situation will not escalate and the two nations can settle the disputes.

The company was founded in 1990 by MIT roboticists, including the company's chairman and CEO Colin Angle.

IRobot started its business in China in the late 1990s, by working with U.S. toy manufacturer Hasbro in Guangzhou to build robot toys, and opened its head office in Shanghai last September.

Email: zhanglingxiao@nbd.com.cn