Broken down by industry, the automotive industry continues to lead the global demand for industrial robots with the largest volume: around 125,200 units were sold in this segment in 2017 - a growth of 21%. The strongest growth sectors in 2017 were the metal industry (+54%), the electrical and electronics industry (+27%) and the food industry (+19%).

Strongest growth in Asia
In terms of sales volume, the strongest individual markets are in Asia: China installed a total of around 138,000 industrial robots in 2017, followed by South Korea with around 40,000 units and Japan with around 38,000 units. In America, the USA is the largest single market with around 33,000 industrial robots sold and in Europe it is Germany with around 22,000 units sold.

"The growth of industrial robots is continuing at an impressive pace worldwide," says Junji Tsuda, President of the International Federation of Robotics. "Key trends such as digitalization, simplification and human-robot collaboration will have a decisive impact on the future and continue to drive this rapid development."

Human-robot collaboration enables new production processes
In the course of digitalization, real production is becoming ever more closely networked with the virtual world of data, opening up completely new possibilities for analysis - including machine learning. Robots will acquire new skills through learning processes. At the same time, the industry is working on simplifying the handling of robots. In future, industrial robots will be easier and faster to program using intuitive processes.

This type of technology is not only interesting for established users, but also for small and medium-sized companies, for example, which can use it to introduce automation without the need for particularly experienced specialist personnel. This development also paves the way for the third major robotics trend: human-robot collaboration without safety fences offers new concepts for new flexible production processes. In the future, human-robot collaboration will support the flexible production of small quantities with high complexity.