The International Federation of Robotics, or IFR, today listed its picks for the top five global robotics trends of this year. The Frankfurt, Germany-based organization attributed growing demand for automation to technological innovations. The IFR noted that the stock of operational robots around the world attained a new record of about 3.9 million units in 2022. The average robot density, or number of robots per 10,000 human workers, rose to 151. In its latest release, the federation cited some different trends than it had for 2022 and 2023. The trend of using artificial intelligence in robotics and automation keeps growing, according to the IFR. In particular, the emergence of generative AI opens new possibilities, it said. This subset of AI is specialized to create something new from things it has learned via training, and generative AI has been popularized by tools such as ChatGPT, explained the IFR. Robot manufacturers have started to develop generative AI-driven interfaces that allow users to program systems more intuitively by using natural language instead of code. Workers will no longer need specialized programming skills to select and adjust the robot´s actions, predict experts. Another example of the combination of technologies is the use of predictive AI to analyze robot performance data and identify the future state of equipment, said the IFR. Predictive maintenance can save manufacturers machine downtime costs. In the automotive parts industry, each hour of unplanned downtime is estimated to cost $1.3 million (U.S.), reported the Information Technology & Innovation Foundation. This indicates the cost-saving potential of predictive maintenance. Machine learning algorithms can also analyze data from multiple robots performing the same process for optimization. In general, the more data a machine learning algorithm is given, the better it performs, said the IFR.
Full report : Top 5 robotics trends for 2024, according to the IFR.
