2017-2020 Robotics: The Big Breakout!
The most important four years in the history of robotics have begun...with 2017 far exceeding expectations!
“A rising tide floats all boats.” —JFK, September, 1960, Ohio
Looks like Asia is first in line
On its way to New Year’s 2017, 2016 is heralding what will soon come to pass for robotics and robot-driven automation over the next four years, namely: The most important four years in the history of robotics.
A strange happening has taken place in robotics here in 2016: A rising tide of technology has floated all of robotics—all of its industry verticals from industrial robotics to personal robots have risen together. That’s a first; it’s never happened before.
For example, here in 2016 non-industrial robots* have overtaken industrial robots in market size for the very first time. Where industrial robots formerly owned more than 50 percent of overall robotics market revenue, they have now dropped to 41 percent, with non-industrial robots commanding 59 percent…while, at the same time, non-industrial robots are continuing to accelerate and to rise ever higher. Projections for 2020 are astounding (see chart below).
*Non-industrial robots are beginning to assume the roles of personal assistants, delivery vehicles, surgical assistants, exoskeletons, autonomous vehicles, and unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs), among many others.
Of the 240,000-plus industrial robots sold in 2015, 66,000 went to China, while the rest of Asia took on an additional 78,000. Asia accounts for more than half of the world’s output. Since Taiwan’s Foxconn (Hon Hai Precision) does not report its industrial robot sales to the International Federation of Robotics (IFR), the Asian total is actually tens of thousands higher.
This moment of transformation is showing itself more clearly in Asia than anywhere else, especially East Asia, especially Japan and China.
And Asia is showing itself to be a colossus of both industrial and non-industrial robot sales and deployments.
“Driven mainly by growth in these new categories, Tractica forecaststhat the global robotics industry will expand from $34.1 billion in 2016 to $226.2 billion by 2021, representing a compound annual growth rate (CAGR) of 46 percent.”
In terms of units bought and sold; in terms of investments made; in terms of acquisitions; in terms of markets penetrated and captured; and in terms of multi-billion dollar interventions by governments on behalf of robotics, robotics has broken into the open and is on its way. There’s never been another moment quite like it.
The reason behind it all is obvious to most anyone in the field: It’s all about IT (Information Technology) and how IT, cascading into robotics at exponential rates, continues its inexorable onslaught into everything.
Only now that it has penetrated robotics so completely has it finally revealed itself as the reason for the tidal upswell across all of robotics in 2016; while at the same time, it’s showing itself as the driving force behind the future of automation through 2020, and most likely well beyond the century’s second decade.
Boston Consulting Group (BCG) forecasts that the “percentage of tasks handled by advanced robots will rise from 8 percent today to 26 percent by the end of the decade, driven by China, Germany, Japan, South Korea and the US, which together will account for 80 percent of robot purchases.”
Hal Sirkin at BCG says that “the rapid expansion of automation could be compared to the difference between the ‘human learning curve’ and Moore’s Law, which posited that computing power could double every 18 months to two years. “Even if you’re very good, humans can only double their productivity at best every 10 years,” he says. In contrast, researchers can push robots to double their productivity every four years, he estimates. “Compounded over time, that makes a big difference.”
Economist Tyler Cowen agrees that doubling productivity as Sirkin suggests is critical because it will double average incomes every 23 years, while current productivity levels of one percent will not see a doubling for 70 years. If a combination of robots and people are the only means of attaining that advantageous doubling, then so be it.
Artificial intelligence (AI), myriad sensors providing myriad data, the Industrial Internet of Things, Cloud robotics, data analytics, digitization, miniaturization, Moore’s Law, and the exponential rate at which it is all happening—is showing a great IT mashup taking place in IT’s newest form factor, the robot.
All of it obeying the laws of information, because “everything in the universe is shaped by the information it contains.”
“You have big data and cloud platforms and the Internet of Things all coming together at the same time; it’s a pretty unique time in history and it really changes the game.”
GT Nexus is looking down the road a decade forecasting a time when, “there will be more than 100 billion people, devices and systems connected to the Internet of Things, and each connected device will be equipped with dozens of sensors.”
If we can only master advanced analytics
In addition to streamlining end-to-end manufacturing via robot-driven automation, productivity will finally begin to reverse direction, as Cowen points out, while, at the same time, real income is doubled with every new generation of workers (every 23 years), instead of laboring through 70 years to double incomes, which is where current productivity rates are taking global GDP.
Japan and China are now hot about making the Factory of the Future happen at scale, which is where and how long-term productivity will be controlled and future innovation will be nurtured and made to flourish.
Innovation is crucial to the future of productivity. By mastering innovation Japan and China will for the first time ever have gained a large degree of control over productivity. Taking the guess work out of manufacturing will take advanced analytics; those “100 billion people, devices and systems” and associated legions of sensors spewing out an ocean of data that needs to be sorted through and analyzed and crafted into actionable information.
But that sorted through and analyzed part of the equation is oh so very difficult to pull off.
In a recent McKinsey podcast, senior partners Nimal Manuel and Bill Wiseman offer up an eye-opening glimpse at the vast challenge in mastering the analytics:
Bill Wiseman: “When you just look at some basic statistics, like the fact that half of the world’s data was created just in the last ten months, meaning that half of the world’s data, in the history of mankind, was created in less than the last year. It’s just truly shocking. The pace of change that we’re seeing is completely radical. I serve primarily industrial companies, and the way that I see companies taking action and using that data really is to drive another wave of productivity.
“You had the wave of lean, you had the wave of outsourcing, and now we’re seeing the wave of productivity driven by data and analytics, enabling organizations to refine the way that people work together, the way that processes perform, and the way assets are productive. If you think about an oil well, for example, you’ve got more than 300 sensors downhole that are spewing out data at the rate of about a gigabit a second, in some cases.”
Nimal Manuel: “There’s a lot of data being generated. A, not all of it is being captured, and then B, of what’s captured, a fraction is being used.
“There’s an increasing awareness that to compete and to be sustainable, they’ve got to go beyond gut instinct for doing business. It’s got to be data driven, it’s got to be analytics oriented, and that’s how business decisions have got to be made, on the commercial side as well as the operations side. The interesting thing is we are starting to see more and more use cases and applications of this data, but it’s nowhere near at scale.”
That’s the challenge facing the Factory of the Future for both Team Japanand Team China: Capture all of the data and then use it.
If China and Japan can learn to master the analytics, innovation is due for a quantum leap.
“It’s a fast-approaching age where smart factories will replace laboratories as hubs of innovation. New tech inventions as well as process improvements will derive from the machines themselves during the course of manufacturing.
“As Asia leapfrogs the laboratory for the factory floor, it will gain an edge in innovation, the speed of innovation, patents and other intellectual property, and the speed of technology transfer from innovation to real-world practice.
“In short, the factory floor will become the laboratory; the factory floor will become better than the laboratory ever was.”
The only question remaining: How high will the tide rise?
See related: The Great “Blast Off” 2017
