Embargo:
Wednesday, 14 October 1998
00:01 hours GMT
8 October 1998
Record investment in industrial
robots in 1997
A robust growth in industrial robot
investment is forecast for North America and Europe until
2002 - for Japan and other Asian countries previous
forecasts are revised downwards
The number of robots per employee in
industry continues to rise sharply
In the next 10-15 years, dedicated
service robots will be used extensively in a wide range
of professional applications as well as in homes. A new
substantial business area will be created
These are a few of the conclusions drawn in the World Robotics 1998 - Statistics, Market Analysis,
Forecasts, Case Studies and Profitability of Robot Investment just published by the United Nations Economic Commission for
Europe (UN/ECE), in cooperation with the International Federation
of Robotics (IFR).
Record investment in industrial robots in 1997
In 1997, a record number of 85,000 industrial
robots were installed worldwide, surpassing for the first time
the previous record of 1990 (see table 1 and figure 1). In the
same period, Japan=s share of new robot installations fell
from 74% of the world total to 50%, marking a clear trend towards
deceleration of the automation drive in that country. Although
the 1997 robot investment in Japan was 43% higher than in the
trough year of 1994, it was still only 70% of the record 1990
level.
For the United States and the major western
Europe countries, on the other hand, robot investment was
booming and in both 1996 and 1997 all-time records were set. The
1997 robot investment in the United States, for instance, was
almost three times as large as in 1990. In the United Kingdom it
was 2.5 times larger and about 50% larger in Germany and Italy
but only 16% larger in France.
One consequence of the slowdown in robot
investments in Japan, compared to the booming 1980s and
early 1990s, is that a large share of new robot installations is
made up of replacement investment. While almost 43,000 new
robots were installed in 1997, the stock of operational robots
only increased by an estimated 13,000 units. In other words, more
than two thirds of all the new robots replaced older robots.
....but the value of the world robot market is slightly
falling
In 1997, the market for industrial robots, in
terms of units, increased by 6%. Total market value, however,
fell by about 4% over 1996 to $4,8 billion. This drop in the
world market, in dollar value, is mainly explained by the fact
that the dollar appreciated against most other currencies. In
this context it should be noted, however, that the value of robot
shipments only accounts for 30% on average of the total system
cost.
The market in the United States increased from $485 million in 1990 to almost $1,100 million
in 1997. After the record year of 1996, it was expected that the
market in Germany would fall back in 1997. The fall was,
however, only 13%, in terms of DM, and the market amounted to
about 1 billion DM. The market in the Republic of Korea,
on the other hand, plummeted by almost 50% over 1996 to $143
million. While the United Kingdom market surged by
32% to ,66 million, France recorded zero growth and a
market of FF 585 million. The Italian market grew by 5% to
410 billion lire.
Forecast to 2001 and inclusive - Europe and North America
is catching up
Worldwide investment in industrial robots is
forecast to be about 40% higher in 2001 than in 1997. In the six
major economies, almost the same growth is projected (see
table 1). Taking into account the fact that a raising share
of robot investment is directed towards replacement investment,
in particular in Japan, the stock of robots in operation is
forecast to increase from about 710,000 units in 1997 to about
870,000 units in 2001, an increase of 23%. This forecast is
significantly lower than was forecast in previous years, which is
exclusively the result of significant revisions downwards of the
forecasts for Japan and other Asian countries.
While the stock of robots is projected to grow
by only 5% in Japan between 1997 and 2001, it is projected to
increase between 20% (France) and 50% (United States) in the
other major economies (see table 1 and figure 1). Western Europe,
excluding the four major economies, is also projected to have a
robot stock in 2001 which will be 50% higher than in 1997. One
can therefore conclude that although Japan continues to be the
country with the highest penetration of industrial automation, the
balance of automation is swinging back towards Europe and North
America.
The robot density continues to rise - more robots per
employee
When comparing the rate of diffusion of
industrial robots in various countries, the robot stock,
expressed in the total number of units, can sometimes be a
misleading measure. In order to take into account the differences
in the size of the manufacturing industry in various countries,
it is preferable to use a measure of robot density. One
such measure of robot density is the number of robots per
10,000 persons employed in the manufacturing industry.
Employment in the manufacturing industry fell
in many countries in the period 1991-1993, owing to the
recession. Although the economy recovered in 1994-1996,
employment continued to fall in some countries while it
stabilized in others. As at the same time robot stocks continued
to increase, in particular as from 1995, there was a
significant increase in the robot density in 1993-1996 in
most countries. In 1997, the employment situation improved in
many countries but as the increase in the robot stock outpaced
the employment gains, the robot density continued to increase.
Japan has by far the highest density
of robots. In 1997, it amounted to 277 units per
10,000 persons engaged in manufacturing industries. Germany had the second highest with 90 units, followed by Sweden and Italy with just over 60 (see figure 2). In the
other countries in western Europe, Australia and the United
States, the density ranged between about 20 and 40 units.
Figure 3 shows the 1996 robot densities
(expressed as the number of robots per 100 people employed)
in the motor vehicle industry. In this industry there were
9 robots for every 100 persons employed in Japan, 4 in Italy,
between 3 and 4 in the United States, Germany and Sweden and
about 2 in France and the United Kingdom. These figures would
have been twice as large if the density had been measured as
number of robots per 100 production workers.
As one robot generally performs the tasks of at
least two persons it could be said that robots in the Japanese
motor vehicle industry correspond to some 20% of the total labour
force.
Relative prices of robots continue to fall
The unit value of robots for United States,
Germany, Italy, France and United Kingdom peaked at just under $110,000 in 1991. Since 1990, there has been a continuous fall in the
unit price of industrial robots. In terms of national
currencies, the unit price fell by 21% in the United States between 1990 and 1997. In the same period, it fell by 25% in Germany,
19% in the United Kingdom and a record 41% in France.
In Italy, on the other hand, it fell by only 5%.
The relative price of robots, i.e. the
price of robots for a given set of performance indicators, in
relation to labour costs has been falling rapidly. Since 1989,
prices of robots relative to employee compensation in the
business sector have fallen by between 30% and 50% in the United
States, Germany and France, although there was a slight
reversal of this trend in 1996 in the first two countries. It
should be noted, however, that these calculations of relative
prices do not take into account the improvements made in the quality
and efficiency of robots, factors which would, if included,
have made relative prices fall even more. Data on
different types of robots being installed strongly indicate that
for many countries there has been a gradual shift towards a
higher share of more sophisticated robots. The calculations of
relative prices above thus underestimate the true relative
prices. With raising labour costs and falling
price/performance ratio for robots, manual operations will
successively be replaced with robotic solutions.
Figure 4 compares the index of labour
compensation in the business sector in the United States with the
index of the average unit price of robots being installed,
illustrating the widening gap between the two indices, the
so-called Acrocodile gap@.
The food and agriculture industries - the robotization
drive has not yet taken off as previously projected
The use of robots has become established in the
automotive industry and is showing significant growth in
electronics. For a number of years the food sector has been
forecast to become the next major user of robots. This forecast
has been based largely on the need for increased automation
coupled with the significant numbers of personnel involved in
basic handling operations in this sector.
In the case of the food sector the main drivers
to encourage automation are worker health issues, due to highly
repetitive handling of tasks, and increasingly hygiene. The
increasing need for flexibility has encouraged the drive to
robots as an alternative to other forms of automation. However,
the difficulties of application, particularly processing speed
and the nature of the product, coupled with the relatively low
labour costs prevalent throughout the food sector has delayed the
anticipated growth.
World Robotics 1998 demonstrates the low
uptake of robots in this sector and also the slow growth to date.
It is difficult to obtain a clear picture of the current
situation without data from the United States, which is generally
acknowledged as being one of the largest users of robots for food
applications. However, it can be seen that the number of robots
supplied to the food sector is still in the low single figure
percentages of the total installations of the major robot users
such as Japan, Germany and France.
Two major factors which are impeding the uptake
of robots into this sector relate to the expertise and experience
of the engineers in both the users and suppliers. A typical food
plant consists of either highly automated machinery or manual
operations. There is very little that is similar to a robot
system, particularly in the combination of disciplines, required
to specify, develop and implement robot systems. The robot
suppliers and their system integrators may have a great deal of
experience of robot applications but most of this has been gained
within the automotive and electronics industries. The food
industry has specific requirements and modes of operating that
differ from both these sectors. These differences introduce a
communications barrier and a gap in understanding which is
impeding the introduction of robots.
Figures 2-4
However, there is still a widespread belief
that there will be significant growth in robot applications in
the food sector. The robot suppliers are making increasing
efforts to tailor their products to meet the needs of the sector.
The existing equipment suppliers to the food industry are also
either developing their own machines or using robots from the
major suppliers. These strategies are helping to remove the
"cultural" barrier and make applications more likely.
At the same time labour costs are increasing and particularly
food cleanliness requirements are making robot installations more
cost effective.
Three in-depth papers are reviewed in World
Robotics 1998. The first paper surveys worldwide activities
in the developments of robotics for agricultural applications,
indicating the technologies and applications that are currently
under development and will impact robot implementation over the
next decade. The second paper gives an overview of the current
situation regarding the use of robots for packaging applications
and indicates how this will change in the future. Finally, the
third paper entitled "Putting the icing on the cake",
describes a particular robot project undertaken at a food
manufacturing company in the United Kingdom. This provides a good
example of how the customer and supplier cooperated to ensure
that the installation was a success.
Motives for investing in robots - reduction of labour cost
not the only objective
The reduction of labour costs is of
course a major motive for investing in industrial robots. With
falling prices of robots relative to labour costs, robots are
increasingly becoming a cost-effective alternative to labour.
There are, however, several other motives for investing in
industrial robots. The following ones can be mentioned:
Reduction in material costs. In
spray painting applications, e.g. of cars, there are
examples where the targeted return on investment was
almost exclusively achieved through a very significant
reduction of paint consumption.
Higher quality. Subcontractors
to the automotive industry and the electronics industry,
for instance, in order to stay in business, must be able
to certify that they can deliver components with zero
faults and within given limits of tolerance. In many
cases the only way to achieve these objectives is through
robots and automation.
Flexibility in the production volume.
Very often the targeted return on robot investments is
based on the requirement that the robot operates in two
shifts. If demand increases robot cells can easily be
operated in three shifts without extra personnel. This
also implies a higher degree of utilization in other
pieces of equipment in the production system.
Improvement of the working
environment. Robots are often used in work processes
involving heavy lifts, e.g. servicing machine
tools with heavy work pieces, repetitive work,
e.g. assembly or servicing machines with very short
process cycles, handling of dangerous chemicals, human
presence in an environment with heat and smoke
(foundries, furnaces) or as mentioned above in secluded
spray painting boxes. In all these work processes robots
eliminate bad working conditions. As is illustrated in
Case Study 4 of the present publication, the main reason
for a small company in Sweden to invest in a robot cell
was that it had difficulties in recruiting machine
operators because of bad working conditions and a general
shortage of labour in the region where it was located.
Some of these motives are illustrated in four
case studies (from the United States, Germany and Sweden) which
are included in the present publication. Generally, robot
investment has a pay-off time of about two years.
Service robots - an area which is expected to take off in
the next 10-15 years
Statistics on the diffusion of service robots
are very scarce and incomplete. Based on sales figures from some
leading manufacturers, the total world stock can be estimated at
a few thousand but certainly below 10,000 units. For instance,
when cleaning robots, lawn mowing robots and other
types of service robots have reached such a level of
cost-effectiveness that they are affordable not only for
professional use but also for households then the
market for service robots could take off in the same way as it
did for the PC. Other important growth areas for service robots
are household robots (household equipment is increasingly
being equipped with microcomputers, and will eventually be
controlled by a central home PC - in such a system configuration
the service robot would be an ideal component), robots for
handicapped and disabled persons, surgical robots,
safeguarding and patrol robots and repair robots.
Four major application areas for service
robots are reviewed:
(a) Courier and transportation robots,
e.g. for hospital transport of medications, lab samples,
supplies, meals, medical records, and equipment between
departments and nursing stations. Although much time was spent
developing the technology that made it possible for the robot to
perform these tasks completely autonomously, an even greater
amount of time was spent learning how a service robot should
behave when it is working together with human co-workers,
travelling down the same corridors, using the same elevators and
encountering the same patients and visitors. Unlike industrial
robots, service robots come into contact with a variety of people
and situations and they must be able to react appropriately at
all times. They are not working in specially designed
environments, as their industrial counterparts do. The success of
service robots is therefore dependent on the manufacturer
accepting the sometimes inflexible nature of these environments
and their willingness to work within these well-established
boundaries.
(b) Cleaning robots. In the domain of
mobile robots a key target application is floor cleaning.
Cleaning costs represent a significant proportion of overhead
costs for a building. With labour costs accounting for 70-80% of
the cost of cleaning, the pressures are there to find new means
to reduce costs. Floor cleaning robots are seen as a means to
dramatically improve productivity.
A floor cleaning robot is essentially a
standard cleaning machine equipped with the necessary functions
to drive itself round the cleaning area i.e. a navigation control
system and sensors to detect and prevent collision with
obstacles. This frees the machine operator to carry out tasks in
parallel.
(c) Robots for surgery. Recent research
activities concentrating on the introduction of robot technology
into the operating theatre were motivated by the need for an
assistive device to achieve a high accuracy of execution.
This is planned pre-operatively by means of computer planning
systems and provides a better task allocation regarding the
complementary characteristics of the human operator and a robot.
Depending on the complexity of the surgical task, the robot is
either used only to position a surgical guide (semi-active) or to
perform an autonomous execution.
Orthopaedic surgery procedures are currently
performed using hand-held surgical instruments and air-powered
tools (e.g. drills and oscillating saws), in a freehand manner.
Although this approach is inherently safe, it also has a number
of important implications with respect to surgical results. Given
the obvious scope for human error, freehand surgical techniques
can be imprecise. Also, owing to the high levels of skill
required, the outcome of an orthopaedic procedure is heavily
dependent upon the ability and experience of the individual
surgeon, and can therefore vary considerably. In relation to
accuracy and repeatability, existing orthopaedic surgery
techniques therefore leave considerable scope for improvement.
In the surgical theatre, robots can assist in
many ways. They can help the surgical team to avoid X-ray hazard;
they can hold instruments steadily for longer periods than can
the human; they can obtain access to difficult positions. For
these applications, robots must be designed a-priori to meet
different constraints than those imposed by industrial robots.
Patient safety is the primary consideration, with the need to
avoid obstructing or harming the theatre staff a close second.
Minimal access surgery (MAS) is a technique
that does not require a large access wound but only a number of
small openings through which the surgeon deploys a number of long
slender instruments with which the surgical procedures are
carried out. The trauma associated with this small opening is far
less than that associated with the large wounds of open surgery.
As a result, the duration of post-operative convalescence and its
discomfort are both much reduced. Here robots, often
teleoperated, are playing an increasingly important role.
(d) Robots for handicapped and disabled
persons. An assistive robotic device, used by a disabled
person, is likely to be working in an unstructured environment.
The challenge of assistive robotics is to use the intelligent
abilities of the disabled user, assisted by appropriate hardware
and software, to interact with this unstructured environment.
An assistive robotic system may be able
to benefit a person whose disabilities are such that either they
have no control over their hand or arm function or have very
limited strength or reach. Typical users are those with spinal
cord injuries, muscular dystrophy, multiple sclerosis, cerebral
palsy or motor neurone disease, to name but a few seriously
debilitating conditions.
The following robot task areas have been
identified:
- Eating and drinking: The robot
would need to be able to handle implements such as
spoons, forks and cups as well as some items of food
directly.
- Personal hygiene: This might
involve tasks such as washing face, hands, and cleaning
teeth, as well as such simple tasks as scratching an
itch.
- Work & Leisure: This will
involve handling items such as CD=s, videos, remote
controls, chess pieces, books, computer disks and the
telephone.
- Mobility: Tasks such as
opening doors and operating lift buttons.
- General: General tasks will
include reaching objects from the floor or from shelves.
There is a huge potential demand for assistive
robotic devices for handicapped and disabled persons. The
technology is to a great extent already available. Why has the
market then not started to take off? One reason is the huge
investment cost, up to $50,000 for the most sophisticated systems
although the cheapest ones cost less than $10,000. Another reason
is that so far insurance companies and social security agencies
have not sufficiently investigated the alternative social and
economic gains that under certain circumstances could be realized
by assistive robotic systems. What is probably also necessary is
to set up a supply structure based on leasing.
A sophisticated assistive robotic device can
have a technical life length of up to 15 years. As the
maintenance costs are very limited, the total yearly costs ought
to be in an affordable range for quite a large number of people.
In the next 10 to 15 years, there are several
factors which favour the rapid growth in the market for assistive
robotics systems for elderly and disabled persons:
A rapidly aging population (which
implies not only more potential users of robotics systems
but also relatively fewer active persons who can look
after elderly and disabled people),
continuously improved
cost-effectiveness of robot technology, and
economies of scale in the production of
robotics systems.
* * *
The publication World Robotics 1998 -
Statistics, Market Analysis, Forecasts, Case Studies and
Profitability of Robot Investment is available, quoting Sales
No. GV.E.98.0.25, through the usual United Nations
sales agents in various countries or from the United Nations
Office at Geneva (see address below), priced at US$ 120:
Sales and Marketing Section
United Nations
Palais des
Nations
CH - 1211
Geneva 10, Switzerland
Phone: (+41 22) 917 26
06 / 26 12 / 26 13
Fax: (+41 22) 917 00 27
E-mail: [email protected]
For more information about the
publication, please contact:
Mr. Jan
Karlsson
Statistical
Division
United Nations
Economic Commission for Europe (UN/ECE)
Palais des
Nations
CH
- 1211 Geneva 10, Switzerland
Phone: (+41 22) 917
32 85
Fax: (+41 22) 917
00 40
E-mail: [email protected]
or:
International Federation of Robotics
(IFR)
Box 5506
S - 114 85
Stockholm, Sweden
Phone: (+ 46 8) 782 08
43
Fax: (+ 46 8) 660 33 78