3 million Industrial Robots, 100,000 Services Robots, and 32 million Domestic Robots are at Work Worldwide

The Numbers: Operating robots, 2020*

3 million ‘Industrial’

0.1 million 'Professional’ services

32 million ‘Consumer’

* International Federation of Robotics, 11/21

What They Mean:

Karel Capek’s R.U.R., which introduced the word ‘robot’ to the world’s vocabulary 101 years ago, is a cautionary tale. In Act 1, enthusiastic human inventors and business promoters predict that robots will bring the end of scarcity, the abolition of degrading manual labor, and the opening of an age of universal “freedom from worry.” By Act 3, in a sense, they get their wish, but in a way that comes as an unpleasant surprise.

A century later, and two generations since the first industrial robot* went live, how close are we to either of Capek’s predictions?

World Robotics 2021, the annual survey from the International Federation of Robotics, counts 3 million working industrial robots, 109,000 “professional” services robots, and about 32 million blue-collar “consumer” robots at work around the world last year. By their counts, the heartlands of industrial robotics are in East Asia:

(a) Japan is the largest robot-maker, producing 136,000 new robots in 2020. This was over a third of the 384,500 new robots installed worldwide.

(b) Korea is the world’s most roboticized industrial economy, with nearly 932 robots per every 10,000 factory workers, double the 400-to-10,000 ratio of a decade ago. Singapore is a relatively close second at 605 robots per 10,000, with Japan third at 390. Rounding out the top ten are Germany at 371, Sweden at 289, Hong Kong at 275, the U.S. at 255, Taiwan at 248, and China and Denmark at 246 each.

(c) China is home to the world’s largest operating robot workforce. Over 800,000 robots were working in Chinese factories at the end of 2019, and 168,400 more came online in 2020. IFR’s worldwide count of new robots was 384,50, meaning that China accounted for nearly half of all new robot installations. Japan placed a distant second with 38,700 new robots and the U.S. was third at 30,800. By industry, the largest numbers of new robots in China and Korea go to electronics assembly and semiconductor production; in the United States and Germany, they are in the automotive industry; in Japan, automotive and electronics more or less equally.

IFR guesses that 2021 saw 435,000 new robot installations; the count is likely to top half a million for the first time in 2024, with nearly all the projected net growth in Asia. Meanwhile, about 100,000 more complex services robots are at work (transport and logistics; cleaning; agriculture; hazardous waste disposal); and in homes, about 32 million vacuuming, gutter-cleaning, security, and other domestic robots are in fact at least diminishing the human quotient of manual labor. R,U.R.'s universal plenty and absence of worry (and their sinister hidden meanings) have yet to materialize.