Robotics and drone spending is expected to be $95.9 billion in 2018, according to the latest IDC report.
The global spending on robotics and drones solutions will reach $201.3 billion in 2022 and achieve a compound annual growth rate (CAGR) of 19.6 percent over the 2017-2022 forecast period.
Spending on robotics solutions is expected to reach $86.6 billion in 2018 and will account for more than 85 percent of all spending throughout the five-year forecast.
Industrial robotic solutions will account for more than 57 percent share of robotics spending, followed by service robots and consumer robots.
Discrete and process manufacturing will be the leading industries for robotics spending at more than $54 billion combined in 2018. The resource and healthcare industries will also make significant investments in robotics solutions in 2018.
The robotics spending growth among retail industry will be 32.7 percent CAGR, while the robotics spending growth among wholesale industry will be 30.7 percent CAGR over the forecast period.
“Collaborative robots are taking off in industrial applications, driven by customer demands for product quality, delivery, and mass customization,” said Jing Bing Zhang, research director, Worldwide Robotics at IDC.
Analyst firm ABI Research in its latest report said the collaborative robots market will grow to $13 billion in 2027 from less than $500 million in global revenue in 2017.
The largest markets for collaborative robots now are in Europe and the United States. The APAC region will be the primary source of growth for collaborative robots in the future, mainly driven by China.
“While collaborative robots have ceased being a novelty, we expect their adoption rate to accelerate in the coming decades, going from a relative outlier in the larger industry to a central pillar,” said Rian Whitton, research analyst at ABI Research.
Robotics in action
Veo Robotics is developing a sophisticated plug-in system that will allow human operators to interact with large, powerful industrial robots, such as those used to weld car parts or home appliances.
Japanese industrial giant Fanuc claimed that its bespoke FIELD edge-based IoT platform, in an 18-month partnership with an automotive manufacturer, reduced unplanned downtime by a rate of $20,000 per minute.
Drone spending
IDC said drone spending will be $9.3 billion in 2018 and is expected to grow at a faster rate than the overall market with a five-year CAGR of 32.1 percent.
Enterprise drone solutions will deliver more than half of all drone spending throughout the forecast period with the balance coming from consumer drone solutions. Enterprise drones will increase its share of overall spending with a five-year CAGR of 37.1 percent.
The utilities and construction industries will see the largest drone spending in 2018 ($925 million and $808 million, respectively), followed by the process and discrete manufacturing industries.
Key growth in drone spending will come from various industries including education (72.8 percent CAGR) and federal/central government (70.1 percent CAGR).
China will be the largest geographic market for robotics, delivering more than 30 percent of all robotics spending throughout the forecast, followed by the rest of Asia/Pacific (excluding China and Japan), the United States, and Japan.
The US will be the largest geographic market for drone spending at $4.3 billion in 2018, followed by Western Europe and China.
