The word robot is derived from the Slavic word robota, which means work/job. The field of robotics develops machines that can automate tasks and do various jobs that a human might not be able to do. Robots can operate in many situations, for many purposes, and are available 24 hours a day and seven days a week. Nowadays, commercial and industrial robots are widespread, performing a variety of tasks, especially tasks which are dirty, dangerous or monotonous. However, fully autonomous robots did not appear prior the second half of the 20th century.
The figure below shows the number of installed industrial robots in 2021. By region, China is by far the world’s largest market, followed by Japan. According to IFR International Federation of Robots, Japan is the world’s predominant robot manufacturing country with a market share of 46% of the global robot production.
With the help of AI technology, robots are becoming increasingly autonomous For a long time, robot
programming was highly time consuming, and economically unviable for high mix production as the cost of switching from one product to another was very expensive A branch of AI known as “machine learning“ (ML) uses algorithms to give robots the ability to learn from data and get better over time AI, ML, and “deep learning” (DL) are technologies that have enabled the development of robots that can perform a wide range from tasks, from a simple pick and place operations to complex manipulation and navigation in unstructured environments.
It remains to be seen how AI, ML, and DL will shape the future of robotics and automation. However, it is quite likely that they will play a key role in shaping the future of robotics.
Source: Morgan Stanley, Credit Suisse, Our World in Data, Grand View Research, Cognitive Robotics Vol. 3,
IFR International Federation of Robots