World Robotics Statistics

Prepared by UNECE and the International Federation of Robotics

The IFR statistics website collects together various statistics, market analyses, forecasts, case studies and information about the profitability of robot investment.

Their annual publication "World Robotics : Statistics, Market Analysis, Forecasts, Case Studies and Profitability of Robot Investment" contains comparable international statistics on industrial robotics, as well as on service robots. Detailed statistics are given for 40 countries, broken down by application areas, industrial branches, types of robots and by other techno-economic variables, as well as data on production, exports and imports for selected countries, and trends in robot densities.

The 2007 version of the yearbook "World Robotics" analyses developments during 2006 and gives forecasts up to 2010. It contains a number of case studies, showing actual robot installations and their effect on costs, production, employment structure and overall profitability. A 7-page executive summary is available to download.

A summary of the most important facts and figures follows :

1. 2006 world industrial robot market: Total world-wide sales 112,200 units, down 11% on 2005. World total stock of operational industrial robots is 951,000 units, 3% greater than 2005.
2. Service robots for professional use: 39,900 units installed up to the end of 2006. Projections for the period 2007-2010: 35,500 new installations.
3. Service robots for personal and private use: about 2.44 million units for domestic use and about 1.1million units for entertainment and leisure sold up to end 2006. Projections for the period 2007-2010: about 3.6 million units to be sold.

The World robotics statistics of former years can be found through the UNECE search facility, for example giving the World Robotics 2005 abstract (data from 2004).

Summarised data on industrial and service robots is available from the 2005 and 2004 World Robotics yearbooks.

The next World Robotics is expected to be published in August 2008.