In the process of AI robots evolving towards miniaturization and high mobility, traditional rigid circuit boards are becoming a key bottleneck in their mobility. Flexible printed circuit boards (FPCs) have successfully overcome this limitation with their core characteristics of being flexible and thin, becoming the "nerve center" for moving parts such as robot joints and robotic arms.

Taking collaborative robots as an example, their wrists and elbows need to complete multi-dimensional rotation and swinging. FPC can be directly arranged to fit the joint surface, maintaining stable signal transmission during repeated bending. Compared with traditional wiring solutions, it not only compresses the volume of components by more than 30%, but also avoids the risk of faults caused by tangled circuits. At present, mainstream AI robot manufacturers have adopted polyimide based FPC in the end effector, which has the characteristics of high and low temperature resistance and anti-aging, and can meet the harsh working conditions of -40 ℃ to 125 ℃ in industrial scenarios, to ensure real-time data interaction between AI control system and executive components.

In the field of service robots, the application of FPC is more innovative. The flexible torso of household companion robots and the deformable joints of educational robots both rely on FPC to achieve the design goal of "lightweight+high integration". For example, a certain brand of AI cleaning robot integrates sensors and motor drive circuits by embedding FPC in the vacuum cleaning component, reducing the component thickness to 2mm and freeing up more space for battery expansion in the internal structure of the robot, resulting in a 25% increase in battery life. With the increasing demand for robot motion accuracy by AI algorithms, the line width and spacing of FPC have moved towards less than 0.1mm, further supporting the high-speed response of the robot's "perception decision execution" closed-loop.