President's Message

Terms ending in 2006 Raja Chatila LAAS-CNRS France Ruediger Dillman University of Karlsruhe (Germany) Paolo Fiorini Universita’ di Verona, Italy Toshio Fukuda Nagoya University, Japan Pradeep Khosla Carnegie Mellon University, USA David E. Orin The Ohio State University Industrial Robot Statistics and Industrial Activities The word “robot” is well known among the general public. This familiarity is due in large part to the many science fiction books, films, cartoons, and toys related to robots. Popular culture, as well as impressive demonstrations of humanoid robots (particularly by Honda and Sony), has fueled the public’s imagination about the potential applications of robotics. The expectations of our field are high, even though most of the public is unfamiliar with robotics science and technology. One expectation is that the robotics industry will continue to grow and contribute to the improvement of our daily lives. As a robotics scientist and a member of RAS, I certainly hope that this expectation will be fulfilled. One serious social issue that should be addressed by robotics is the decrease of labor power to maintain industrial activities and social services as the elderly population continues to increase. For example, in Sweden and Japan, it is predicted that one in four people will be more than 65 years old in 2020. In such a society, a large number of people will need physical assistance in their daily lives. The robot is expected to be an important technology to solve these social problems, and these issues are expected to provide a significant stimulus to robotics industry. Looking at the current robotics industry, however, the gap between expectations and current industrial activities may raise concerns that the robot industry is ill-positioned to confront the technological challenges of the future. In Japan, in 2000, total sales of industrial robots were about $660 million (Japan Robot Association statistics). International Federation of Robotics statistics say that Japan accounted for about 40% of worldwide sales of robots in 2000. We can then estimate that total worldwide sales of industrial robots was about US$1,400 million in 2000. This amount is minute in comparison to other big industries such as the computer and semiconductor industries. Because popular expectations of robotics have been so high for so long and because the apparent robotics market is still so small, many people doubt that robotics industrial activity will flourish in the future. When discussing statistics on the market size of industrial robots, however, we need to exercise caution. The statistics do not include the majority of robotic technology used in our society. Even for factory automation, there are many robots that are not included in the statistics. For example, last year one of the largest Japanese automobile companies announced that they would introduce commercially available industrial robots into their factories, even though they already had many robots in their factory. Their current robots, developed in house, were not bought on the commercial market and were certainly not included in the statistics. In fact, the vast majority of the current robotics market falls in the category of “custom made,” rather than commercially available “readymade” robots, and these sales and development costs are rarely included in the statistics. Custom-made robots appear in applications such as automated production lines, cleaning systems for airplane bodies, and space robots such as the Mars Sojourner, Spirit, and Opportunity. Although custom-made robots are not manufactured in quantities comparable to commercially available robots, because of the large number of applications involving custom-made robots, this market is too large to be