Robot adoption has grown at a rapid pace over the past three years and this will continue. IFR (International Federation of Robotics) forecasts 15% average annual growth in industrial robots and up to 25% growth in professional service robots by 2020. “Many of the recent developments in robotics are driven by advances in Artificial Intelligence – said Junji Tsuda, president of IFR -. For example, AI enables robots to sense and respond to their environment. This increases the range of functions they can perform, from navigating their way around warehouse floors, to sorting and handling objects that are uneven, fragile or jumbled together. Most collaborative robots today work in sequence with humans, each performing separate tasks. Developments in AI mean we can expect robots to perform increasingly effectively as human assistants, not only understanding and answering questions as they do today, but also acting on voice commands and gestures, and even anticipating a worker’s next move in order to remove an obstacle from his path”.
