Bergur Thormundsson
Research expert covering technology in the Nordics, AI and smart cities
Collaborative robots worldwide - statistics & facts
While it might sound like something out of Star Wars, it is a fact that robots enable industries to lower production costs while improving the quality of their products and increasing productivity. The adoption of collaborative robots, or cobots, is one of the ways to achieve these goals. Driven by the trend of industrial automation, cobots are a fast-growing segment within the broader robotics market. The global cobot market is expected to grow especially in revenue. Valued at some 1.2 trillion U.S. dollars in 2023, the market is projected to almost triple in the coming years, reaching the size of over seven billion U.S. dollars in 2030.
Industrial robot behemoths vs. flexible cobots
While industrial robots are mainly intended to work separately from humans, cobots are designed to directly interact with human employees in a shared workspace. Industrial robots tend to be big, heavy, and strong enough to lift objects weighing several hundred kilograms. This makes their usage a potential danger to humans, and are, thus, often operated behind a physical barrier, such as a fence or a cage. Cobots, on the other hand, are specifically designed to perform tasks alongside or in cooperation with humans. Cobots rely on precision and flexibility, rather than on strength and force, and are typically smaller in size with a low payload capacity. Moreover, cobots tend to have rounded edges, which further minimizes any risk of human injury.European and Asian companies reign supreme
Unsurprisingly, some of the biggest cobot manufacturers are producing industrial robots as well. Companies such as Japan-based FANUC, Switzerland’s ABB, and the Germany-based KUKA are all major players in the field of robot manufacturing, developing both cobots and industrial robots. Specialized cobot producers include Taiwan-based Techman Robot, British-based Automata, Germany’s Franka Emika, and Denmark’s Universal RobotsRobots not going anywhere
It is highly unlikely that the robotics market will see a reduction in demand in the coming years. More advanced AI programs are likely to allow the collaborative robot market to grow considerably, as AI can improve the flexibility of these robots beyond their industrial robot counterparts. In that way they can maneuver and operate in even closer proximity to human workers, as well as take on more complex and nuanced tasks within a multitude of enterprises.
