Recent technological advancements, in particular artificial intelligence (AI) and cloud computing, will help to unlock the full potential of robotics, a new report predicts.
The reason for this, the 2024 edition of GlobalData’s Robotics report explains, is that: “Cloud computing and AI enable robots to collaborate and access huge amounts of data uninterruptedly.”
The impact of these technologies will help to drive compound annual growth within the robotics industry of 14% between 2023 and 2030, the report forecasts, from a value of $76.1bn in 2023 to $217.6bn in 2030.
The industry is broadly split into two segments – industrial robots and service robots. The smaller segment is that of industrial robots, which was worth $23.8bn in 2023, roughly 31% of the market, and is expected to grow to $45.1bn by 2030. The service robots sector, which is already the larger, is expected to see huge growth. Worth $52.3bn in 2023, it is expected to hit $172.4m by 2030.
The growth in the service sub-sector can be explained by its lack of maturation relative to that of the industrial sub-sector, with robots having been used widely in industries for decades, and its highly fragmented nature. These two factors together means that there is significant opportunity for growth, not least as robots increasingly enter consumer markets.
Service robots, those that assist humans at work in non-industrial settings or the home, are expected to become increasingly prevalent in healthcare, hospitality and foodservice settings – and, indeed, already have a presence in all three. The report notes, though, that “more advancements in autonomous navigation and communication are required to achieve the true potential of robotics in these sectors.”
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By GlobalDataOf the role AI will play in the future of robotics, the reports says: “AI has become a major component of robotics technology in recent years. AI capabilities enable robots to make decisions and move autonomously without human input. Complete automation of industrial and service robots will require most future robots to be powered by AI.”
It adds: “Advances in AI have enabled the development of robots, allowing them to become highly complex products rather than the stand-alone, fixed-function machines they used to be. This, in turn, has increased the number of roles that robots can perform. Cloud computing has been central to this development, allowing sensing, computation, and memory to be managed more rapidly, securely and at scale.”
Ultimately, cloud connectivity allows robots to share knowledge with others on the same platform and that data collected from individual robots can be aggregated and processed using algorithms and hardware not available on the robots themselves.