International comparisons of industrial robot penetration

Abstract This paper describes the international comparisons of industrial robot (IR) penetration. The results of such comparisons are summarized as follows: 1. 1. There is a large gap in the robot density between the leading country, Japan, and other major developed market economy countries. 2. 2. The penetration trend curves, however, show a very similar pattern among the other countries. 3. 3. The differences of IR penetration, therefore, can be expressed by introducing a time lag for each country. The time lag of the other countries is estimated by regression analysis for multinational time-series data, resulting in a figure of 4.3–7.5 years behind Japan. 4. 4. With regard to the application and industrial distribution of IR, remarkable differences are found between Japan and other countries, namely, the use of assembly robots in the Japanese electric/electronics industry as opposed to welding robots in the automotive industry of other countries.