You are working for Achelon Investments, as a specialist investment analyst looking at opportunities to invest in innovative companies across Asia.

As a part of your role, you have a focus on technology and digital experiences.  In particular identifying organizations that have the potential to leverage technology and digital experiences to obtain a competitive edge. It's these types of organizations, that famed investor Warren Buffett, refers to as having an economic moat...or in other words, they have an innovative moat that is unique and hard to replicate. This gives them a tremendous competitive benefit.

You've identified a company - the Haklong Robotics Company, which is trading out of Shenzhen, in southern China, which you think could be worthwhile investing in.

Haklong Robotics invest heavily in the research and development of robotics for commercial applications, and they have just released their first robot - Yanglin - a robot that is intended to provide a cobot capability to some of China's largest manufacturers. Yanglin can be configured to meet a number of different needs, but in short it is a cobot, that is intended to supplement, not necessarily replace human capabilities in the manufacturing process.

Think of Yanglin as a cobot platform, which is then connected with a wide range of robots that can be configured to meet a number of commercial customer needs including:
 

logistics - being able to transport large items within in a warehouse or manufacturing plant; for example being able to shift boxes (up to 250 kgs)

assembly - being able to partial assemble engineered products

safety - being able to perform defined activities that are hazardous to human beings - for example spray painting of assembled products or cleaning of manufacturing plants where heavy metals/dangerous chemicals are used

Yanglin is ready to connect to the IoT and therefore can be connected up to a wider ecosystem of devices and sensors in an organization.

Questions for this assignment

As a part of your analysis, you will need to define what cobots are. How are they different compared to military robotics?

Coming back to your understanding of cobots - should an organization looking to purchase a Haklong Robotics - Yangling, expect that these robots are fully autonomous and able to complete end to end cycles of activities?

Where do you see there could be an economic moat for the Hakong Robotics - Yangling model?

What advantages do you see connecting Yangling cobots to the IOT could provide?