Industrial Robots in Use Globally

Moderate-growth respondents emphasize that industrial robot adoption is governed by slow capital replacement cycles, integration costs, and manufacturing capacity rather than technological capabilities. One writes: "Factories are not software. A steel mill or automotive stamping line might operate for thirty years before its core architecture changes." But high-growth respondents tend to argue that more versatile robots, produced at scale, mean these traditional constraints are unlikely to apply: "The big step change is the possibility of operating autonomously in changing environments, which would mean that all these robots can be deployed without substantial upfront investments in customizing their development for deployment. This would make deployment faster, and the number of places where they can be deployed larger."

Many high-growth respondents argue that breakthroughs in AI's cognitive abilities "are likely to expand the range of tasks robots can perform, including [in] semi-structured environments like warehouses and light manufacturing, accelerating adoption," whereas several moderate-growth respondents question the "correlation between the types of AI advances that are occurring and the deployment of industrial robots." One argues that growth is likely to be "largely linear and unaffected by technologies like AI…AI makes no sense for precision movements that need tight coordination with PLCs [programmable logic controllers] for reliable real-time execution."

Many high-growth forecasters see aging populations in China, Japan, South Korea, Germany, and Europe as a major driver of automation: "Long-term trends such as aging populations and labor shortages in major economies will further push industries to replace human labor with robots, especially in automotive, electronics, logistics, and metalworking." Several moderate-growth forecasters, however, point to countervailing forces in the developing world: "India, Southeast Asia, Latin America are largely untapped but have much lower manufacturing wages, which slows adoption."; "So much of the world is younger with human labor in industrial environments and those regions have growing, younger populations."

Many high-growth respondents anticipate an acceleration well beyond historical trends, often invoking exponential or hockey-stick dynamics. One highlights "two factors for this: 1) Technological development will continue, expanding the realm for robot performance and suppress[ing] per-unit costs (supply effects). 2) Globalization of markets and economic growth in low-/middle-income countries will expand the market for robot sales across the globe (demand effect)." Another writes, "in order to see truly explosive growth in robotics, robots should be able to make new robots that in turn make new robots. Given the recent progress in robots…and the possibility of software-only AI speeding up progress in robotics in the coming years, I think this is a perfectly conceivable possibility by 2040." Moderate-growth respondents instead tend to anchor heavily on trend extrapolation, particularly for near-term projections: "My median is mostly following the largely linear trend since 2020."; "Linear trend extrapolation is the safe bet here."

Some moderate-growth respondents argue saturation in specific industries could be a factor. One writes: "China, by far the biggest market, is getting closer to saturation in mature segments like automotive welding and electronics assembly, even though earlier-stage segments still have a lot of room." But another forecaster notes that "South Korea has more than double the number of robots per 10,000 workers as China (roughly 1,000 to 500), and so there is scope for catch up in China as well as…better robots doing more tasks, expanding the scope of robots," and others point to untapped sectors—food processing, construction, logistics, textiles, and SMEs [small and medium enterprises]—as sources of future demand.

Many high-growth respondents assign significant probability to humanoid robots upending the existing dynamic: "I expect humanoid robots (e.g., Tesla Optimus, Figure 01, 1X NEO) to be classified within IFR's 'industrial robot' operational stock by the mid-2030s as they are deployed at scale in factory and warehouse settings." Moderate-growth respondents either ignore humanoids or express skepticism. One writes: "There may not be that many industrial jobs for humanoid robots to do by the time they are cheap enough to deploy effectively."