Service robot market to touch $17 Billion
By siliconindia   |   Thursday, 30 September 2010, 00:34 IST
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Bangalore: The International Federation of Robotics' (IFR) Statistical Department has recently forecasted $17 billion in annual sales for the global service robot market by end of 2013.Various techniques have emerged to develop the science of robotics and robots. Robots are revolutionized and are now used for Safety, Security, and Service. Mobile Service Robot (MSR) industry is an emerging market for Robotic solutions. MSRs work efficiently with no human control or intervention in dynamic, unstructured environments. Studies show that about 77,000 service robots for professional use were sold worldwide last year and the total value it was sold was $13 billion, domestic use robots were about 5.6 million units ,entertainment and leisure robots sold up to 3.1 million units. The market for robots for handicap assistance is still small, but is expected to increase substantially in the next 10 years. Robots for personal transportation and home security and surveillance robots will also increase in the near future Millions of these low-cost products are already sold and almost 11 million are forecasted to be sold between 2010 and 2013 representing an estimated value of $5 billion. Areas with strong growth are defense applications, milking robots, logistic systems, inspection robots, medical robots and mobile robot platforms for multiple uses. The total value of professional service robots is forecasted at about $12 billion. A rat race has begun between countries to have the most sophisticated Robots ever built. In fact South Korea has built an army called "Killbots" for warfare. India is no less compared. Indian Prime Minister Manmohan Singh has claimed that his South Asian nation will be the latest country to pursue technologies for developing a robotic army. He also mentioned interest in developing next-generation propulsion, camouflage, and precision guided munitions systems. Indian-American Ashutosh Saxena , an Assistant professor of computer science at the Cornell University , U.S. did his B. Tech. from the Indian Institute of Technology, Kanpur, in 2004 is working on robots . Saxena, who joined the Cornell faculty in 2009, believes robots can make people's lives better and more productive. He leads Cornell's Personal Robotics Lab, which develops software for complex, high-level robotics. One of his research platforms is a robotic arm with a gripper. Using a camera, the robot evaluates an object - say, a cup or plate and figures out how best to grab it. This technology will eventually integrate into the full-fledged dishwasher-loading robot. Research shows that with the rapidly increasing power of the microprocessor and artificial intelligence techniques, robots have dramatically increased their potential as flexible automation tools. The new surge of robotics is in applications demanding advanced intelligence. Robotic technology is converging with a wide variety of complementary technologies as well. The number of robots used in tasks as diverse as cleaning sewers, detecting bombs and performing intricate surgery is increasing steadily, and will continue to grow in coming years.

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