Transportation and logistics sector drove rising robot sales in 2022

Companies struggling with staff shortages are continuing to turn to automation, driving the total number of service robots sold for professional use in 2022 to rise 48% to 158,000 units, according to the International Federation of Robotics (IFR).

In the category of professional uses, the transportation and logistics sector was the busiest application, with sales growing by 44% to more than 86,000 mobile robot solutions sold in 2022 for the transportation of goods or cargo.

Other professional sectors with large sales included:

• robot sales for open indoor environments with public traffic, such as food and beverage delivery in restaurants (up 78% to almost 37,300 units),
• hospitality robots for mobile guidance, information, and telepresence (up 125% to more than 24,500 units),
• overall sales of medical robots were down 4% to about 9,300 units, including surgery robots (up 5% to almost 4,900) and robots for rehabilitation and noninvasive therapy (down 16% to less than 3,200 robots),
• robots in agriculture grew by 18% with almost 8,000 units shipped in 2022, featuring more than 5,800 robots (+9%) used for agricultural tasks like milking and barn cleaning. ** professional cleaning robot sales grew by 8% and reached almost 6,900 units sold, with most of them dedicated to floor cleaning (up 10% to 4,900 units sold)

And in the category of consumer robot sales, sales of robots for consumer use reached about 5.1 million units in 2022. That number was largely driven by household robots such as vacuums for domestic floor cleaning (almost 4.9 million sold in 2022) and gardening robots used for lawn mowing (1.1 million units in 2022).

“The service robot industry is developing at a fast pace,” IFR President Marina Bill said in a release. “Shortage of skilled workers and a lack of staff applying for service jobs boosts demand. IFR identified almost 1,000 service robot suppliers worldwide delivering autonomous services.”