You are advised to also refer to my post of: “Humanoid Robots current status and vendors”
Potential market
Industrial robot
According to the “2023 World Robot Report” released by the International Federation of Robotics, global industrial robot sales will exceed 500,000 units for the second consecutive year in 2022, a year-on-year increase of 5%. China is the world’s largest robot market. In 2022, the sales of industrial robots in the Chinese market will account for more than half of the world’s.
Currently, more than 70% of the world’s industrial robots are deployed in China, Japan, the United States, South Korea and Germany. In 2022, the sales of industrial robots in these five major markets will account for 79.1% of the world’s total. A report from the International Federation of Robotics shows that the number of newly installed industrial robots in global factories in 2022 will be 553,000, of which Asia accounts for 73%, Europe accounts for 15%, and the Americas account for 10%.
Application areas
From the perspective of industry structure, more than half of the global demand for industrial robots comes from the automotive industry and the electrical and electronics industry. In addition, industrial robots are also widely used in production lines in food, medicine and other industries, helping companies reduce costs and enhance competitiveness by improving production efficiency and accuracy.
Global robots market
The International Federation of Robotics predicts that the global robot market will reach US$66 billion by 2024.
Global industrial robot sales are expected to exceed 590,000 units in 2023. The average annual compound growth rate from 2023 to 2026 is expected to reach 7%, and sales are expected to increase to 718,000 units.
Robot market
China has become the world’s largest industrial robot market for 10 consecutive years. In 2022, China’s industrial robot output will reach 443,000 units, a year-on-year increase of more than 20%, and the installed capacity will account for more than 50% of the global share. According to data from the International Federation of Robotics, China will install approximately 290,000 industrial robots in 2022, a year-on-year increase of 5%.
Robot category
Industrial robot
For which industries?
Number of industrial robot installations worldwide by industry. Globally, the electrical and electronics industry ranks first in robot installations. The automotive industry leads the U.S. in the installation of industrial robots.
Factory automation
Mainly, they are various robots that assist in industrialized automatic production in factories. The most successful and well-known ones are the arm robots used in the automotive manufacturing industry for online welding, sheet metal, painting and other major processes in automotive manufacturing.
Industrial robot vendors
ABB (ticker: ABBNY), Fanuc (ticker: FANUY), Yaskawa Electric (ticker: YASKF), and Midea’s KUKA are also the most typical representatives of industrial automatic production robots.
Another representative is the wafer production process of the semiconductor industry. The wafer process of modern semiconductor factories is already highly automated, and the efficiency and precision are improving year after year. For example, the five major semiconductor equipment manufacturers such as Applied Materials, Lam Research, and ASML have all benefited greatly from this. Please see the following post for details:
- “Top five semiconductor equipment providers“
- “How does Applied Materials, lord of semiconductor equipment, make money?“
- “How does Lam Research, top chip equipment player, make money?“
- “ASML, who dominate TSMC’s fate“
This type of robot has existed for decades and is very mature. It has greatly contributed to the progress of human civilization.
Logistics
The logistics robots of various large e-commerce companies’ warehouse rot currently can assist in tallying, packaging, sorting, shipping, moving, and can even deliver packages on their own to a limited extent, performing last-mile delivery to replace the services of deliverymen.
The most typical example of a warehouse robot is the production automated warehouse robot Symbotic (ticker: SYM). Symbotic’s largest investor and customer is Walmart. Symbotic’s other well-known big retail customers include Target Department Store, Albertsons and C&S Wholesale.
Resource recovery
The most famous are Apple’s various recycling robots such as Daisy, Dave, Liam, and Taz, which are responsible for dismantling iPhones and recycling valuable materials. In 2022, Apple announced that robots can complete the disassembly and recycling of an iPhone every 18 seconds. Resource recovery.
Service robot
Definition
The International Organization for Standardization (ISO) defines it as “a robot that performs useful tasks for humans or equipment other than industrial automation applications.” Such robots could be used in areas such as medical and professional cleaning. In 2022, the number of service robots installed in various application fields will increase, except for medical robots. Specifically, the number of service robot installations in the reception, transportation and logistics industries increased by 2.3 times and 1.4 times respectively.
Development of various countries
As of 2022, the United States leads the manufacturing of professional service robots, with roughly more than twice the number of manufacturers as China (ranked second). The number of robot manufacturers in Germany, Japan and France is also considerable, with 85,000, 72,000 and 53,000 respectively. In most of the countries surveyed, the vast majority of such manufacturers already have businesses.
Service robots type
Surgical robot
Medical surgical robots represented by Intuitive Surgical:
- “Intuitive Surgical, a company that essentially monopolizes surgical robots“
- “How does dominated Intuitive Surgical make money?”
Imaging medical device
Including X-ray, computer tomography, magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) and other imaging medical machines that have existed for a long time. Some of the more advanced ones can also assist medical personnel in making preliminary imaging judgments.
Care robot
Nursing robots in medical institutions and nursing homes for the elderly are also business opportunities that various manufacturers are currently actively seizing to improve and share.
Catering services robot
Automated tasks including food preparation, fixed kitchen chores, ordering, delivery, and on-site restaurant services can save considerable manpower and reduce the chance of errors.
Sweeping robot
Xiaomi’s sweeping robot is the best representative.
Entertainment robot
Amazon Echo, Google’s Google Home, and Apple’s HomePod are all well-known representatives.
Collaborative robot
While traditional robots operate independently, collaborative robots are designed to work alongside humans. The robotics community is showing increasing enthusiasm for collaborative robots due to their safety, flexibility, scalability and iterative learning capabilities.
Digital twin (robot)
It refers to the analogy of physical entities, processes or systems in the information platform, which is similar to the twin of the physical system in the information platform. With the help of digital mapping, the status of physical entities can be understood on the information platform, and predefined interface components in the physical entities can even be controlled.
Digital twins can be used in various industries (currently mainly industrial) to optimize the use of core devices and processes and simplify maintenance work. There are also attempts to apply digital twins in agriculture and fishery.
Because Nvidia has powerful products and technologies in the metaverse, it is very active in the digital twin market. For details, please see my post of “Nvidia’s new business set to grow its share price“
Humanoid robot
Please see the dedicated introduction to my post below.
- “Humanoid Robots current status and vendors”
Unmanned device
Drone
Chinese drone manufacturer DJI has almost monopolized the global non-military drone market. The main reasons are very simple: the price is very attractive, the technology is far ahead of its peers, the functions are powerful, and the models are complete. This caused the U.S. government to automatically and quietly lift the ban in 2024 after announcing a ban on DJI products for many years, on the grounds that it could not find a substitute.
Self-driving car
All self-driving cars are actually mobile machines.
Rely on artificial intelligence
All robots, without exception, require the integration of artificial intelligence to varying degrees to enhance the robot’s capabilities. It is not an exaggeration to say that the degree of integration of artificial intelligence determines the capabilities of a robot.
Related articles
- “Humanoid Robots current status and vendors”
- “Robot industry current status and application“
- “Intuitive Surgical, a company that essentially monopolizes surgical robots“
- “How does dominated Intuitive Surgical make money?”
- “Nvidia’s new business set to grow its share price“
- “Apple’s upcoming products, services, and technologies“
- “Top five semiconductor equipment providers“
- “How does Applied Materials, lord of semiconductor equipment, make money?“
- “How does Lam Research, top chip equipment player, make money?“
- “ASML, who dominate TSMC’s fate“
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