Andrea Castelli
The robotics sector is one of the pillars of the current technological evolution, thanks to its growing penetration in every socio-economic field. As proof of this, the data recently released by the International Federation of Robotics, the organization representing the global robotics industry, through the report “World Robotics 2024 Service Robots”.
Dedicated to the analysis of the service robot segment, whose function is to replace or integrate human activity in the resolution of specific tasks, the report highlights how this technological segment is experiencing a particularly flourishing period not only from the planning but also and above all on a commercial level. In 2023, the volume of service robots marketed exceeded 205 thousand units, with the Asia-Pacific area absorbing almost 80 percent compared to 16 and a half percent in Europe. An exploit induced according to the International Federation of Robotics by the now chronic shortage of manpower which has pushed more and more companies to invest in solutions capable of making autonomous those cyclical and repetitive activities that service robots are today capable of dealing with in a all similar to what a human being would do.
First user logistics
From this perspective, the logistics sector was the master, which not surprisingly put around 113 thousand new robots to work in 2023, over 55 percent of the automatons marketed, while the medical sector ranked second which absorbed approximately 54 thousand 400 robots.
In third place then the agricultural sector with 20 thousand service robots, demonstrating how the ever-increasing industrialization of crop cycles and the evident benefits induced by precision farming have increased the demand for the automation of many applications, both in the livestock and livestock sectors. in agronomic analyzes and practices. A result that of the primary sector which, in addition to highlighting the dynamism of a production area called to respond to the challenge of guaranteeing food subsistence for over eight billion human beings in an increasingly sustainable way, also takes on greater value when compared to the marked imbalance in comparisons of the logistics and medical sectors in structural and economic terms.
Automation made in Europe
Contrary to what one might think, neither China nor the United States are the design and production outposts of service robots. According to data from the International Federation of Robotics, the homeland of this technological industry is Europe which, with 405 companies in the sector, covers 44 percent of the entire global reality, compared to 268 Asian companies, equal to 29 percent. of the total, and of the 233 North American companies that represent 25 percent of the sector.
Title: Intelligent automation, the era of automatons in agriculture
Translation with Google
