i3 - January/February 2016 - 28

By 2018, sales of service robots
for personal and domestic use
will reach 35 million units,
according to IFR's stats.
By then, China will account for
more than one-third of the
industrial robots installed
worldwide.

Like the 20 other exhibitors in the Robotics
Marketplace at CES 2016, Double Robotics is
pursuing a niche that is part of the coming decade's boom in digital life. "Pepper," a
four-foot tall humanoid social robot that can
show emotions, sold out its production of
1,000 units per month within the first minute that they were offered in September.
The device created for SoftBank
Mobile by Aldebaran (SoftBank Robotics
Corp.) was initially available only in Japan,
but its CES presence underscores its global
expansion. Pepper can understand "70 to
80 percent of spontaneous conversations,"
the company says.
Social robots, often priced at less than
$1,000, are emerging worldwide. Blue Frog
Robotics in France is selling "Buddy" as a
companion. Jibo, one of Indiegogo's most

JANUARY/FEBRUARY 2016

successful crowd-funding projects two years ago (raising $3.7
million), can recognize people.
On the other hand, Amaryllo International, a Dutch home
security firm, is concentrating on single-purpose robotic devices.
Its iCamPro Deluxe "intelligent auto-tracking camera" represents
the focused applications of some robots. The company has won
CES Innovation awards for two consecutive years.
Similarly, the single purpose Grillbot includes high-powered motors, rugged wire brushes, and a custom microprocessor chip that lets it scrub a grill in about 10 minutes. The company sold more than 65,000 units in its first year and plans to
add five new features to improve the cleaning process.
Winbot does windows. Deebot does floors. Atmobot is a
mobile air purification robot. All of them come from Ecovacs Robotics, an Ohio company that distributes devices
through big box chains. The outlook for the "cleaning robot
market" looks good, according to a global study, published in
November that foresees a $2.5 billion category by 2020. That
represents a 15.3 percent compound annual growth rate from
2015 to 2020.
GLOBAL EXPANSION
The International Robotics Federation
(IFR) says that the automotive and electronics industries are the primary drivers of the
robotics boom. IFR's latest analysis points out
five countries (China, Japan, the U.S., Korea
and Germany in that order) account for about
70 of the global robot supply.
By 2018, sales of service robots for personal and domestic use will reach 35 million
units, according to IFR's stats. By then, China
will account for more than one-third of the
industrial robots installed worldwide. The
annual supply of industrial robots in China
has jumped by nearly 60 percent in the past
five years compared to 11 percent growth in
the U.S.
IFR confirmed that the primary robotic
applications are for vacuum and floor cleaning, lawn mowing, entertainment and leisure
robots. But IFR also ranks robots for elderly
and handicap assistance at the top of its list.
I T I S I N N O VAT I O N

Previous spread: Courtesy Softbank; This spread: Courtesy Grillbot; Courtesy Aidebaran

"Robots are going to be as popular as cars, machines and
airplanes," predicts Alibaba Group Chairman Jack Ma.
"Robots will be part of the family," adds the chairman of China's vast Internet empire citing the invasion of social robots.
With names such as Buddy, Pepper and Jibo, the devices are
moving from "novelty" to "normal"-although the robotics
category as a whole is still fragmented and diverse.
While humanoid social robots attract attention, the even
larger array of specialized devices dedicated to a narrow range
of functions constitute the most activity right now. A major
challenge is identifying the ways in which devices relate to
humans.
"It's a very natural interaction," says Double Robotics
CEO and Co-founder David Cann, describing his company's
telepresence-on-wheels robot that allows a person to be in
two places at once. Interviewed via his Double robot at a trade
show in Dublin, Ireland, in November, as he sat in his office in
California, Cann explained, "I can drive around. Now you can
be another person in the meeting rather than simply a face on
a flat-screen." The Double (an iPad atop a stick atop a wheeled
base, all remotely controlled) is being tested in retail stores for
customer interaction as well as in schools
and hospitals.

http://www.alibabagroup.com/en/global/home http://service.amaryllo.eu/ http://www.doublerobotics.com/ http://www.ifr.org/ http://www.ifr.org/ https://www.aldebaran.com/en

i3 - January/February 2016

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