North American companies are onboarding robot workers at a faster-than-ever pace. According to the Association for Advancing Automation, companies ordered a record-setting 12,305 machines in the second quarter of 2022. "The pandemic definitely highlighted some areas and shortages in resources needed to be automated, and customers had to automate just due to the fact that people weren't coming back to the workplace," FANUC North America Vice President Louis Finazzo said. "For a long time, the automotive industry accounted for 60 to 70% of robot orders," Association for Advancing Automation President Jeff Burnstein said. "And we knew that when other industries started adopting is when we would really see growth, which is finally happening now, in part due to the pandemic forcing companies to look at other options when they couldn't bring people into work."