Robotic automation is no longer just the domain of large manufacturing concerns, it is becoming an increasingly important competitive factor for small and medium concerns. So says Joe Gemma, President of the International Federation of Robotics (IFR), which has just published its 2016 World Robotics Report.
The report states that by 2019 more than 1.4 million new industrial robots will be installed in factories around the world, bringing the total deployed globally to 2.6 million units.
The report also forecasts that compact, user-friendly collaborative robots (cobots) will become a key driver in the automation market. Industries predicted by IFR to adopt cobots at an increasing rate include automotive, plastics, electronics assembly and the machine tool industry.
The worldwide annual sales of industrial robots are predicted to increase by at least 13 per cent on average per year from 2017 to 2019.
Human-robot collaboration will have a “breakthrough” in this period, enabling robots and humans to work safely side-by-side without any fences, while increasing production efficiency and quality.
Daniel Friis, chief commercial officer of Universal Robots, a market leader in the cobot space, said: “Universal Robots welcomes the report which confirms the validity of our mission: lowering barriers and enabling automation in areas previously considered too complex or costly.
“Our installed base of more than 10,000 cobots worldwide illustrates the dramatic growth potential of this game-changing automation technology.”
In Australia and the Asia region in particular, strong, continued robot growth is forecasted by IFR, with the 2016 report suggesting a rise of 18 per cent in robot supplies this year, while installations are expected to rise by 15 per cent. However, China is predicted to remain the main driver of robot growth, expanding its dominance with almost 40 per cent of the global robot supply being installed in China by 2019.
The Asian and APAC regions are a strong focus area for Universal Robots. The company opened a Shanghai subsidiary in 2013 and is expanding its distributor network in the regions where customers are increasingly using its cobots to optimise product quality and automate repetitive tasks that many manufacturers have difficulty staffing with manual labour.
According to Friis, the demand for consumer goods across global markets is pushing manufacturers to produce innovative, high-quality products more quickly, consistently, and sustainably around the world.
This in turn is driving demand for flexible cobot solutions.
In 2015, Universal Robots launched UR3, the world's first collaborative table top robot. The company also launched the world's first human colllaborative robot in 2008 (the UR5), and in 2012 brought to market the UR10, a collaborative robot with a longer reach and greater payload.
In the last four years, collaborative robotics has gained recognition as a new class of robots, and large robot manufacturers (like ABB, KUKA and Fanuc) as well as smaller start-ups like Rethink Robotics have entered the fray.
