Professional services robots and the robotics market

The idea of robots picking items from warehouse shelves may still seem futuristic today. But the future may be closer than many people think. Of the almost 1 million robots we expect to be sold for enterprise use in 2020, we predict that just over half of them will be professional service robots, generating more than US$16 billion in revenue--30 percent more than in 2019. What's more, with regard to enterprise spending, the market for professional service robots is growing much faster than that for industrial robots (figure 1). If recent trends are any sign, professional service robots may pass industrial robots in terms of units in 2020 and revenue--in 2021. That's not to say that the industrial robotics market is hurting.