Globally, the deployment of Precision Specialist Robots is being driven across various industries by increasing blue-collar wages, ageing working populations, and the falling costs of robots. Additionally, the availability of 5G and private networks is encouraging the use of robots to perform complex and time-critical tasks such as remote surgery; it's being used in the healthcare industry to support healthcare professionals in multiple use cases including minimally invasive surgery.
The Additive Manufacturing market is also growing, due to the ability to enable rapid prototyping, faster time to market, reduced material wastage, and on-demand production of customisable offerings. Some countries are promoting the use of additive manufacturing to decrease the dependency on imported parts and components, bringing greater efficiency to the supply chain.
The report provides a detailed definition of the sector, analysis of market development and profiles of the key vendors in the space. It also provides a summary of the current status of adoption and Transforma Insights’ ten-year forecasts for the market. The forecasts include analysis of the number of IoT connections by geography, the technologies used and revenue.
A full set of forecast data, including country-level forecasts, sector breakdowns and public/private network splits, is available through the IoT Forecast tool.
This section begins with the reasons driving the adoption of Precision Specialist Robots and Additive Manufacturing. It then describes the benefits of Precision Specialist Robots (like speeding up the production process by automating routine tasks) and of Additive Manufacturing (such as achieving lower material costs).
It also explains how manufacturing companies are also embracing emerging technologies to remain relevant in a competitive landscape, leading them to adopt robotics to improve efficiency. For instance, Beyerdynamic leveraged the Robotiq 2-Finger Gripper and Wrist Camera along with the Universal Robot UR 5, which has increased its production rate by 50%.
This section discusses how industrial robots have significantly impacted economic growth by supporting manufacturers to achieve economies of scale. For example, the International Federation of Robotics (IFR) claims that the number of operational industrial robots increased from 1.3 million in 2013 to 4.2 million in 2023.
This subsection charts the factors that lead to the rise in the number of industrial robots, such as increased aged workforce across various geographies. It also includes how the workforce will look across various countries (like China) in the upcoming time.
This subsection talks about the major challenges (like the high integration cost of robotic technologies) that may hamper the adoption of industrial robots.
This subsection talks about the crucial roles robots are playing in the healthcare industry (like performing complex operations by accessing hard-to-reach areas of a human body using magnified cameras and robots). It also points out the challenges behind their mass adoption (like their high costs).
It discusses the correlation between the usage of industrial robots and manufacturing sectors, with a focus on some geographical locations (such as the US). It also refers to countries like India, which has become one of the leading adopters of robot installations in the manufacturing industry in recent years and has installed 5,400 robots in 2022.
It focuses on how industrial robots can ensure sustainable manufacturing for business organisations. It argues that industrial robots consume less energy, ensure limited human intervention, and reduce wastage. Case in point, an ultrasonic cutting system designed by Elliptical Design in partnership with TM Robotics can reduce production time by more than 50% and reduce waste generation by 83%.
This subsection defines collaborative robots or cobots and discusses their roles in workstations. It also talks about how the manufacturing sector is leveraging these cobots to deal with various challenges (like rising labour shortages).
It charts some of the initiatives undertaken by various countries towards the promotion of manufacturing of robots or the usage of robots across different industries. For instance, the European Commission has decided to fund and support robotics-related research with a focus on the manufacturing and construction sectors.
This subsection talks about the preferred communication technology in industrial robots, how that scenario is changing (like how 5G technology is beginning to be used for data-intensive tasks requiring greater speeds and high bandwidth with low latency communication), and the future prospects.
It also mentions some relevant IoT deployments in this application, like Grupo Antolin driving 1 million screws per month for Audi door panels using robots, to produce 1800 panels per day.
This section defines Additive Manufacturing (AM), the major reasons behind their increasing adoption (like allowing organisations to develop on-demand customisable products), and how they can be beneficial to companies (like supporting companies in producing lighter and cheaper parts). It also discusses how AM is better than traditional manufacturing (like a single 3D printing system producing multiple products without any retooling).
This subsection talks about how various governments are also supporting the use of Additive Manufacturing to accelerate digital manufacturing to achieve better productivity gains through efficient manufacturing. For example, the Indian government launched a national plan to develop a 3D printing ecosystem, under which it is targeting 50 technologies, 100 new start-ups, 500 products, and 10 existing and new manufacturing sectors.
It discusses why the construction and aerospace industries are proving to be the early adopters of Additive Manufacturing. For instance, Additive Manufacturing can build cost-efficient homes in a shorter time span (thereby proving to be a boon for the construction industry). Similarly, Additive Manufacturing enables the production of lighter parts, which support the aerospace industry in fuel savings. Therefore, it is being adopted by the aerospace industry as well. This subsection also mentions some relevant IoT deployments in this application, such as Hoedtke deploying a hybrid production system for additive and subtractive manufacturing.
This subsection focuses on the integration of IoT in home-based 3D printing and talks about the host of possibilities this has enabled for small businesses and everyday consumers. For instance, users can now remotely access, monitor, and control their printing processes via mobile devices or computers. It also discusses how manufacturers are also responding positively to this demand and how this is benefitting the users. Lastly, it discusses the limitations of this arrangement (including the prohibitive cost of IoT-enabled 3D printers and security and privacy issues), which may affect their adoption. It also provides a few examples of various 3D printers in this space, like the Bambu Lab A1 3D Printer and Anycubic Kobra 3 Combo.
The key vendors section lists some of the main providers of products and services related to the precision specialist robots and additive manufacturing connected devices market, such as ABB, Bosch, Carbon, Denso, Fanuc, Honeywell, Kuka, Mitsubishi, Nachi Fujikoshi, Rockwell Automation, Staubli, Stratasys, Universal Robots, and Yaskawa. The report provides profiles of the various vendors including aspects most relevant to this Application Group, such as product offerings, pricing, financial results, and technology.
In the market forecasts section, we provide a summary of the forecasts from the Transforma Insights IoT Forecast Database:
The report charts the growth in the number of precision specialist robots and additive manufacturing connected devices, which will grow from 10.5 million units in 2023 to 23.7 million in 2033.
Transforma Insights forecasts are compiled on a country-by-country basis. This report includes a regional summary, showing splits between Australasia, Greater China, North America, Europe, Japan, Latin America, MENA, Russia & Central Asia, South East Asia, South Korea, India & South Asia, and Sub-Saharan Africa.
Transforma Insights’ IoT forecasts include splits between the various connectivity technologies as follows: 2G, 3G, 4G, 5G mMTC, 5G non-mMTC, LPWA (non-mMTC), Satellite, Short Range, and Other.
This section discusses which technologies will be used in the precision specialist robots application group.
This part of the report discusses the market growth in terms of revenue (module revenue, service wrap revenue, and VAC revenue). Transforma Insights estimates that the revenue in the Precision Specialist Robots Application Group will grow at a CAGR of 12%.
