Research

As application opportunities increase, the mobile robotics sector continues to expand rapidly, with funding to start-ups continuing, and larger established technology companies, including AGV suppliers, entering the market with solutions developed in-house or acquired. As standardization and commoditization looms, companies emphasize SW, RaaS and specialization as differentiators.

Industrial Robot’s Joanne Pransky interviews Hugh Herr, head of the Biomechatronics Research Group and Center for Extreme Bionics at MIT, about the challenges and joys of developing and commercializing robotic prostheses.

China has witnessed significant robotics sales and investment in 2020, a continuation of an earlier pattern. Still, young Chinese robotics companies face many challenges including a price sensitive domestic market, relatively low labor wages, trade conflicts and geopolitical tensions.

Market research and consultancy firm Interact Analysis estimates that worldwide revenues for mobile robots will reach US $2.4B in 2020, representing a 45% increase for AMRs and 11% for AGVs over 2019. But that is only the beginning.

The Covid-19 pandemic has broadened the use case for food and grocery delivery services, and enhanced their value proposition. The same can be said for autonomous food and grocery delivery, but significant, business, technological, social and political challenges remain which the accelerative effects of the Covid-19 pandemic do not ameliorate.

Trade conflicts, geopolitical tensions, and now the COVID-19 crisis, is putting global supply chain at risk, and as a result companies are expected to reverse the multi-decade trend of offshoring. As robotics and automation becomes more capable, cheaper, and easier to implement, the technology is likely to accelerate reshoring initiatives.

Monash University’s Dr. Nicole Robinson explains how social robots can play a role in diet and weight reduction without the need for human intervention.

Cloud computing represents the most important horizontal innovation for the robotics industry to date, with the market for robot-related services powered by cloud computing reaching US$157.8 billion in annual revenue by 2030.

A new study co-authored by an MIT economist Daron Acemoglu shows firms that move quickly to use robots tend to add workers to their payroll, while industry job losses are more concentrated in firms that make this change more slowly.

LogisticsIQ expects the overall revenues from the Warehouse Automation Market to increase from US $13 billion in 2018 to reach US $27 billion by 2025, at a CAGR of 11.7% (2019 to 2025).

MIT economist Daron Acemoglu’s new research puts a number on the job costs of automation.

In 2019, overall robot market revenues experienced negative growth for the first time in many years affected by the global manufacturing downturn and reduced demand in major end industries such as automotive and electronics. However, the collaborative robot market still maintains a high growth rate of more than 30% (32.1% in revenue term and 31.3%…

Modular robotics are currently a niche market, but the need for flexibility could propel demand, predicts one global market analyst.

Nominations are now open for companies and groups to apply for the RBR50 2020 Innovation Awards.

Incident management, rural communications among most cited use cases.

‘Top trends of 2020’ includes predictions for 2 million new industrial robots by 2022.

Robotics, automation, AI and drones are enabling digitization efforts for the future supply chain.

Actionable insights around the world of robotics at the click of a download button.

New survey shows high interest in automation and robotics to address accuracy and efficiency.

Hardware purchases to dominate both sectors, with manufacturing remaining top buyer.

Impact of automation yet to be felt, and workers remain optimistic that it will help their future work.

Merging the world of creativity and imagination with robotics and AI.

Application of waste-sorting robots shows success of machine learning techniques.

ElectroSkin can be a building block to the next generation of soft robots.

Non-automotive companies ordering robots are near record numbers for 2019, RIA says.