Ready For Social Robots?

After years of steady growth, innovation and sometimes disappointment, the robotics market is heating up on several fronts amid some new breakthroughs in the arena.

Both the industrial and service robotics markets are hot. In addition, the consumer market is seeing a new level of interest, as the industry is invaded by the next wave of so-called personal assistant robots or Ingen Dynamics for the home.

Asus, Blue Frog Robotics, InGen, Jibo, NEC, Samsung and others are developing various personal assistant robots for consumers. In addition, a number of companies from China are also developing them.

Personal assistant robots might be the next big thing. Or they could flop. “If successful, Jibo (and its competitors) could usher in a new consumer electronics market—social robots for the home,” said Dan Kara, an analyst at ABI Research.

“Personal robots, often called social robots, are technically advanced robots that interact directly with people and are designed to assist in the home, or to act as a companion,” Kara said. “Personal robots, which are Web-enabled and sometimes humanoid in form, are designed to be the center of control for consumer devices and household appliances, and can monitor the home and respond as requirements dictate. They are loaded with a variety of sensors, with some able to recognize faces and speech and respond to verbal commands.”

Basically, personal assistant robots are advanced versions of smart speakers or home automation systems. Social robots consist of the same features, but they are different than the so-called smart assistants or smart speakers in the market such as Amazon’s Echo and Google’s Home. Generally, smart speakers aren’t robots per se, but rather these systems are fixed, voice-controlled units that can perform many tasks, such as answer questions and play music, using far-field voice recognition technology.

But to be sure, the new social robots are far from being the long-awaited, humanoid-like intelligent robot. These advanced AI-based robots are still several years away from reaching the mainstream.

Having a personal robot for the home isn’t a new idea, of course. Over the years, a number of companies have rolled out these types of systems in the market. “They have not been a success,” Kara said. “They were expensive, and functionally and socially limited.”

The new class of social robots appears to be more promising. “They will have connectivity to the Internet, including access to AI services for content sensitive processing, natural language processing, facial recognition, object recognition, quality cameras and more, along with connectivity to smart home products,” he said.

Still, these systems are limited to one degree or another, prompting many to ask a simple question: When can consumers buy a useful humanoid-like, AI-based intelligent robot for the home?

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“We’ve seen a lot of advancements in motion autonomy, but the question is when am I going to have an intelligent personal assistant to help me with my chores,” said James Kuffner, chief technology officer at Toyota Research Institute (TRI), an R&D organization that is developing robotics technology and autonomous driving for cars. Before joining TRI, Kuffner was the robotics director at Google from 2009 to January 2016.

“In the next 5 to 10 years, we are going to see some very capable consumer-level robots,” Kuffner said. “It’s already starting to happen.”

Still, the robotics industry faces a number of technical and cost challenges for both current and future robots. And the industry needs some major breakthroughs in the field of artificial intelligence. “We are still far away from artificial super intelligence,” said Modar Alaoui, chief executive of Eyeris, a developer of emotion recognition and deep learning technology. “That’s basically where cognition comes into place. We are still a little bit away from that.”

The industry is making progress, though, thanks to some major innovations for the various technologies used in robotics, such as machine learning, semiconductors and sensors.

The fragmented market

The definition of a robot is a system capable of carrying out actions automatically. The robotics market can be traced back to 1961, when George Devol developed Unimate, the world’s first industrial robot. Unimate was a programmable robotic arm.

Then, in 1996, Honda devised P2, the world’s first humanoid-like robot. From there, the field of robotics has exploded and morphed into a number of segments. In total, the global robotics industry is expected to jump from $34.1 billion in 2016 to $226.2 billion by 2021, a growth rate of 46%, according to Tractica, a market research firm.

According to analysts, the broad and fragmented robotics market includes the following systems: autonomous vehicles, consumer robots, drones, enterprise robots and industrial robots.

Each of these markets can have different robot types. For example, the consumer market includes toy and educational robots, personal robots, robotic lawn mowers and vacuum cleaner robots.

ABI Research divides the robotics market into three main categories—public, private and consumer. The public sector is sub-divided into two areas—government and research/education.

The U.S. Department of Defense and EPA are just two examples of the government sector. These agencies could use drones and other robot types.

The private sector, meanwhile, is also sub-divided into two categories—industrial and commercial services. For years, industrial robots have been for factory automation. Generally, industrial robots use giant and rotational arms to perform an assortment of assembly tasks. They are used in tasks that are considered too dangerous or demanding for humans.

The industrial robotics market is booming amid a major buying spree in China. China, which uses these robots to automate its various industries, is projected to represent 40% of the world’s industrial robotics market by 2019, up from 32% in 2016, according to the International Federation of Robotics (IFR), a trade group.

In total, industrial robot makers are expected to ship 290,000 units in 2016, up 14% over 2015, according to IFR. Some 70% of industrial robots are used in the automotive, electrical/electronics, and the metal/machinery segments.