Siasun Robot and Automation is China’s oldest major robot manufacturer, founded in 2000 at the Shenyang Institute of Automation, one of China’s leading robotics research centers, which remains its parent institution. For 25 years, Siasun has been building industrial robots in a market dominated by FANUC, KUKA, ABB, and Yaskawa. It has survived, grown, and accumulated a $572 million revenue base while most of its Chinese competitors failed or remained small. In 2024-2025, Siasun launched two products that represent its strategic response to the AI-and-humanoid era: the iMRS 2.0 collaborative robot system and a 360 kg payload heavy-duty robot showd on CCTV. This article examines both and what they mean for Siasun’s competitive position.
25 Years of Industrial Robot Manufacturing
Siasun’s 25-year history is China’s industrial robot history in compressed form. In the early 2000s, Chinese factories used almost exclusively Japanese and European robots, FANUC, KUKA, ABB, Yaskawa controlling over 95% of the domestic market. Siasun was one of the first Chinese manufacturers to produce robot arms that could compete on technical specifications rather than just price, driven by its Shenyang Institute of Automation research heritage. By 2025, Chinese manufacturers (Siasun, Estun, Inovance, EFORT, Han’s Robot) collectively hold approximately 35-40% of the domestic market, still less than the foreign brands, but a dramatic change from the early 2000s. Siasun revenue in 2025: approximately CNY 4.1 billion ($572 million), covering robots, automated production lines, and smart factory system integration.
iMRS 2.0: Collaborative Robot System
iMRS stands for Intelligent Mobile Robot System. The iMRS 2.0, launched October 2024, is Siasun’s answer to the question: what happens when you combine a collaborative robot arm with an autonomous mobile robot base and connect both to an AI planning system? The iMRS 2.0 is a mobile manipulator, a 6-DOF collaborative arm mounted on Siasun’s AMR (autonomous mobile robot) base, navigating factory floors autonomously while manipulating objects on the move. The AI planning layer (updated in version 2.0) enables task assignment from natural language or MES system commands: “retrieve pallet 7A from rack 12 and deliver to assembly station 3” triggers autonomous navigation, manipulation, and delivery without specific trajectory programming.
iMRS 2.0 specifications: 10 kg arm payload, 850 mm reach, ±0.05 mm repeatability, IP54. AMR base: 200 kg maximum combined weight, laser SLAM navigation, 8 hours battery life. AI system: Siasun proprietary large model trained on manufacturing scenarios in Chinese factories. The AI update in 2.0 specifically improves Mandarin instruction comprehension and Chinese manufacturing vocabulary recognition, a direct competitive advantage in domestic deployments where operators communicate in Chinese technical dialect.
360 kg Heavy-Duty Robot: CCTV Demo
In 2025, Siasun’s 360 kg payload heavy-duty robot was featured in a CCTV documentary on Chinese industrial automation. The robot is designed for heavy automotive and aerospace manufacturing: lifting complete vehicle subframes, positioning large aerospace structural components, handling mold sets in die casting operations. Payload specifications: 360 kg at full reach, 2,800 mm horizontal reach, ±0.08 mm repeatability at rated payload. At 360 kg payload, this is among the heaviest-duty robots in production, FANUC’s M-2000iA/2300 Super is the global benchmark at 2,300 kg, but Siasun’s 360 kg places it in the heavy industrial tier above all Chinese competitors and most European ones.
The CCTV feature is significant beyond the technical specification. CCTV documentaries on domestic industrial technology are state-endorsed content. Being featured means Siasun’s 360 kg robot passed a review process that selected it as representative of Chinese industrial capability. This is the kind of credentialing that drives procurement decisions in state-owned enterprise customers, the largest buyers of industrial robots in China.
Robot-Built-by-Robots Factory
Siasun operates what it calls a “robot-built-by-robots” factory in Shenyang, a facility where Siasun robots manufacture components for new Siasun robots, with humans handling only quality inspection and final assembly supervision. The factory is heavily automated: robotic welding, robotic machining, robotic painting, robotic assembly, robotic testing. Production capacity: 10,000 robots per year from the Shenyang facility. This factory serves as both a production asset and a product demonstration, potential customers can visit and see Siasun robots working in a real production environment rather than a demonstration booth.
Financial Position and Challenges
Siasun revenue grew approximately 8% in 2025, slower than younger competitors like Dobot (35%+) or Han’s Robot (77%) but stable for a company of its scale. The challenges are structural: Siasun’s revenue base includes large system integration projects (automated production lines, smart factory systems) with longer sales cycles and lower margins than standalone robot sales. The company is also competing in a market where its Chinese competitors have improved rapidly and its Japanese/European competitors have maintained technology advantages in the highest-precision segments. Siasun’s strategy, iMRS mobile manipulation, heavy-duty specialization, AI integration, addresses the segments where its 25-year manufacturing experience provides genuine advantage over younger entrants.
Full China ranking: Top 40 China Robot Rankings 2025. Heavy industry factory context: robot arm factories China.
Sources
- Siasun: iMRS 2.0 launch announcement (October 2024)
- CCTV: Documentary on Chinese industrial automation featuring Siasun 360kg robot (2025)
- Siasun: Annual report 2025
- CRIA: China industrial robot market share data 2025
