The Fourth Industrial Revolution and the Role of Industrial Robots: A with Focus on China

Digital technology has significantly contributed to the change of people's lives worldwide, because its application has caused a rapid transformation of all aspects of human life, and especially fast transformation in the design, production, operation and maintenance of the production system, which caused an unexpected jump in productivity. It can be said that fourth industrial revolutions ongoing process, which can be labeledin a variety of ways, such as "intelligent factory", "smart industry" or "advance manufacturing". Development of the digital technologies in the last twenty years has introduced us from third in the fourth industrial revolution. The first time the term “Industry 4.0”, which refers to fourth industrial revolution, appears in the Germany in year 2011 whose government promotes automation of production processes by introducing digital technologies. Germany is one of the most technologically developed countries in the world and it is logic that this revolution begins there. This example follows the other countries in the world. Fourth technological revolution depends on a number of new and innovative technological achievements. It is necessary to integrate production processes in all production phases and further applications by using ICT technologies for digitalization. The automation of production processes must include advanced sensors and intelligent robots that can be self-configured to be able to make specific product. It is necessary to collect large amounts of data to be analyzed and used in the production processes. It is also necessary to realize network communication (include mobile and internet technology) between machines in the production process, the production system and the operator, as well as suppliers and distributors. Application of previously mentioned leads to the intelligent manufacturing processes that have a wide range of change of production processes. To intelligent process we can come only by applying intelligent industrial robots because they represent one of the cornerstones of the fourth industrial revolution. In this paper an analysis of industrial and service robot application in production processes. With the implementation of innovative technologiessupported by digital technology in the industry,we come to intelligent manufacturing processes,that is, intelligent factoriesof the future, thus boosting globalcompetition.