Robotics has traditionally been associated with industrial applications such as manufacturing, but according to a robotics market forecast report by Tractica, the market is shifting to rapidly growing segments such a consumer, enterprise, military, healthcare, and vehicle applications.
The Tractica report says the robotics market has experienced a restructure as the traditional industrial robotics sector has declined as an overall percentage of the total robotics industry. In 2017, non-industrial robots represented 70 percent of the almost $40 billion global robotics market. By the end of 2018, they expect that non-industrial robots will rise to 76 percent of the total market and grow to almost $53 billion.
Research director Aditya Kaul said the shift in non-industrial robots is already happening in multiple sectors.
“Consequences of this shift are already beginning to play out, evidenced by recent acquisitions of industrial robotics companies by players in other sectors including consumer electronics companies,” said Kaul.
For example, a Chinese consumer electronics manufacturer, Midea, recently acquired an industrial robot company, KUKA. The center of robotics has shifted from traditional centers of Japan and Europe towards artificial intelligence sources such as Silicon Valley and China. Many AI technologies such as deep learning and natural language processing are helping revolutionize autonomy and UI/UX capabilities in robots.
China currently has 60 percent of the revenue share in industrial robotics, but the Chinese government plans to lead the market for non-industrial robots by 2025. Tractica believes by 2025 China will lead the market for consumer robots, enterprise robots and autonomous vehicles. This upward trend reflects China’s goal of becoming a leader in AI, based on homegrown AI semiconductor companies, vigorous software and hardware platforms that can utilize AI in commercial hardware products.
The Tractica report covers a variety of topics based on the forecast of robotics and are segmented into 23 robot application markets. Data in the report includes information about robot shipments and revenue, application market, and enabling technology such as machine vision, voice/speech recognition and more.
