The business of robotics: where are robots and how much are they worth today?

 

Thanks to intrinsic capabilities, robotics is a discipline that, since its origins, has allowed man to increase the performance and quality of production processes, successfully entering the technological strategies of the manufacturing system.

The natural predisposition of robotics for business did not stop with the successes of the first industrial robots, whose purpose was to automate specific phases of the supply chain. The innovative effort continued thanks to more recently conceived robots, such as cobots (collaborative robots), designed to operate alongside humans in conditions of total safety. Leaner, cheaper, and simpler systems to manage and program in their life cycle.

According to Fortune Business Insights, “The global Service Robotics Market size was valued at USD 16.95 billion in 2021. The market is projected to grow from USD 19.52 billion in 2022 to USD 57.35 billion by 2029, exhibiting a CAGR of 16.6 % during the forecast period.”

Speaking of robotics business, the report on the Smart Society published by The European House – Ambrosetti indicates collaborative robotics and service robotics as the two macro-categories referred to when speaking of robots, with what derives in terms of business

In fact, RPA (Robotic Process Automation), self-driving vehicles, and remotely controlled vehicles (aerial, terrestrial, and underwater drones) would not be considered robots.

The production volume of robotics, according to data originally published by the IFR (International Federation of Robotics), would amount to 435,000 new units in 2021, with a growth forecast that should lead to around 518,000 units per year by 2024.

In this context, the data for the period 2018-2020 confirm the rise of collaborative robotics (from 19,000 to 22,000 units), compared to the decline suffered by traditional, albeit technologically advanced, industrial robotics (from 404,000 to 362,000 new units).

Geographically, Asia continues to dominate the scene, with 266,000 new units installed in 2020, of which 168,000 were in China alone, against 68,000 in Europe and 39,000 in the Americas.

Also very interesting is the statistic that summarizes the robotic density of the manufacturing sector, expressed as the number of robotic units for every 10,000 human workers, to indicate the level of automation of the production layout.

South Korea clearly stands out in first place (932 robots for every 10 thousand men), over Singapore (605), Japan (390), and Germany (371). The Chinese giant is in ninth place (246), while Italy follows in eleventh position (224), ahead of Belgium, Holland, Spain, and France.